Preamble

The House met at a Quarter before Three of the Clock, Mr. SPEAKER in, the chair.

PRIVATE BUSINESS.

St. Marylebone Borough Council (Superannuation) Bill,

Staffordshire Asylums Bill,

Lords Amendments to be considered To-morrow.

Bolton Corporation Bill [Lords],

As amended, to be considered To-morrow.

Land Drainage Provision Order (No. 2) Bill,

Consideration of Lords Amendments deferred till To-morrow.

Hampshire Rivers Fisheries Provisional Order Bill,

Consideration of Lords Amendments deferred till To-morrow.

NATIONAL DEBT.

Return ordered "showing for each financial year, commencing the 1st day of April, from 1875 to 1922, inclusive:

(1) The total amount of dead-weight Debt outstanding on the 1st day of April; the amounts which were made available in each year to 1921–22, inclusive, for reduction of Debt, distinguishing the sums expressly provided for service of the Debt, the Old Sinking Fund, and miscellaneous receipts; the gross amount of Debt redeemed; the amount of Debt created; and. the net increase or decrease of Debt in the year;
(2) A similar statement in respect of other capital liabilities;
(3) A similar statement, in respect of the aggregate gross liabilities of the State."—[Mr. Hilton Toung.]

HON. MEMBERS: Object!

Lieut. - Commander KENWORTHY: Can we take a Division?

Mr. SPEAKER: This is a matter on which objection cannot be taken.

Mr. HOLMES: On a point of Order. If a matter cannot be objected to, why should it appear on the Order Paper?

Mr. SPEAKER: This is one of the formalities which have arisen in the course of long practice and are part of the tradition of the House.

Mr. HOGGE: We do not want this Return. Why should the House then be put to the expense of securing it?

Mr. SPEAKER: As I have said, it is a matter of long practice that Returns should be introduced in this way, and I am following the usual practice in this instance.

Lieut. - Commander KENWORTHY: May I ask how it is proposed to gather the voices for and against. Can Members rise in their places. if we cannot have a Division in the ordinary way?

Mr. SPEAKER: There are several of these cases in which the matter comes before the House as a formality, and long practice has settled the procedure.

Oral Answers to Questions — INDIA.

PRESS PROPAGANDA.

Colonel Sir C. YATE: 1.
asked the Under-Secretary of State for India whether the entry into India of the newspaper called the "Vanguard of Indian Independence," lately referred to in the Press, has been prohibited in India, and, if not, why not; and whether extracts from this paper, which is said to be Bolshevist in tone, are allowed to be published in the Indian Press?

The UNDER-SECRETARY of STATE for INDIA (Earl Winterton): The entry into India of the publication in question has been prohibited by the Government of India. If any of its articles are reproduced in Indian papers—a matter on which I can give no news—and if those articles offend against the law. I am satisfied that there will be no hesitation in prosecuting.

CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE.

Sir C. YATE: 2.
asked the Under-Secretary of State for India whether the Civil Disobedience Inquiry Committee, which was appointed by the All-India Congress at its last meeting at Lucknow to tour through all the principal towns of India with the object of ascertaining what part of the country is ripe for disobedience, has yet been arrested; and, if not, what steps are being taken in the matter?

Earl WINTERTON: No arrest has been reported, and from communications received from the Government of India the Secretary of State is satisfied that this means that no dangerous development has taken place.

RUPEE (EXCHANGE VALUE).

Mr. HANNON: 3.
asked the Under-Secretary of State for India whether his attention has been drawn to the decision of the Stock Exchange fixing the exchange value of the rupee at 1s. 4d. for the purpose of dealing in rupee securities on the Stock Exchange; and whether, under these circumstances, any change will be made in the official rate?

Earl WINTERTON: My attention has been drawn to the reported decision of the Stock Exchange Committee to which my hon. Friend refers. It is open to the Committee to take such decision as they think fit, as a matter of convenience for the purpose of facilitating dealings in rupee securities on the Stock Exchange; but this does not affect the official policy, which is based on an entirely different set of circumstances.

Oral Answers to Questions — BRITISH ARMY.

GENERAL SIR IVOR MAXSE (SPEECH).

Captain WEDGWOOD BENN: 4.
asked the Secretary of State for War whether his attention has been called to the statement alleged to have been made by the Officer Commanding-in-chief, Northern Command, relative to the League of Nations, when addressing the boys of St. Peter's School, York, on the 30th June; and whether any action has been taken thereon?

The SECRETARY of STATE for WAR (Sir Laming Worthington-Evans): I would refer the hon. and gallant Member
to my reply to the hon. Member for East Edinburgh on 27th July.

Captain BENN: Does the right hon. Gentleman confirm the account which appeared in the "Times," and the description of the League of Nations as "all tosh," and has he taken any disciplinary action in the matter?

Sir L. WORTHINGTON-EVANS: still must refer the hon. and gallant Gentleman to the reply I gave, which was to the effect that Sir Ivor Maxse's speech was misquoted in the Press.

Lieut.-Commander KENWORTHY: In view of the tenor of the speech, has a verbatim report of the Prime Minister's speech to the Free Church Ministers last week been sent to the officer commanding the Northern Command?

Captain BENN: Has any intimation been sent to the "Times" newspaper, which is usually perfectly accurate, complaining of the report of this speech?

Sir L. WORTHINGTON-EVANS: No, Sir, I have not thought that necessary.

Mr. BANTON: Can the House be supplied with a correct report of the speech?

Mr. A. HOPKINSON: Will the right hon. Gentleman impress upon all soldiers the wickedness of fighting?

HON. MEMBERS: Answer!

TERRITORIAL EFFICIENCY MEDALS.

Brigadier-General COLVIN: 5 and 6.
asked the Secretary of State for War (1) why W. H. Plowright, ex-sergeant, Essex Yeomanry, Regimental No. D/16304, who enlisted 12th November 1908, and was discharged 20th April, 1919, has not received the Territorial Army efficiency medal to which he is entitled, and for which he has made two applications to Cavalry Records at Canterbury; Will he inquire into the matter;
(2) why P. H. Leeks, late lance-corporal, No. 80074, Essex Yeomanry who enlisted on 11th June, 1911, and was discharged on 5th May, 1919, has not received the Territorial Army efficiency medal to which he is entitled, and for which he has made two applications to Cavalry Records at Canterbury; and will he inquire into the matter?

Sir L. WORTHINGTON-EVANS: I am inquiring into the eligibility of these two non-commissioned officers for the medal in question, and will communicate with my hon. and gallant Friend in due course.

WAR SERVICE CANTEENS.

Sir W. DAVISON: 7.
asked the Secretary of State for War if, during the War, the War Office authorities accumulated moneys from various sources, such as regimental funds of disbanded units, and a proportion of rebates made to units by the Army Canteen Board and the Navy and Army Canteen Board; what is the amount which was so collected and in hand when the United Services Fund was established; what amount was handed to that fund for administration on behalf of ex-service men; and if be will indicate to which statement of accounts this money will be found credited?

Sir L. WORTHINGTON-EVANS: Yes, Sir; the fund derived from a proportion of the rebates amounted to £1,266,343 14s. 11d., of which the amount remaining to be handed over to the United Services Fund when it was established was £874,554 15s. 10d. The balance was expended for the benefit of the Forces. These amounts are referred to in paragraphs 3 and 4 of Sir William Plender's report and are included (although the latter amount is not shown separately) in the balance sheet of the Navy and Army Canteen Board on page 12 of the White Paper (Command 1717).

OFFICERS (IRELAND).

Lieut.-Colonel Sir F. HALL: 8.
asked the Secretary of State for War what notice of demobilisation was given to temporary officers serving in Ireland before its evacuation by the British forces; whether, prior to their retirement from the service, these officers were given opportunities of finding alternative employment; and whether their term of service in Ireland was taken into account in assessing their gratuities?

Sir L. WORTHINGTON - EVANS: Temporary officers serving in Ireland have been given as favourable treatment as temporary officers elsewhere, both for gratuity and other purposes; that is to say, they have been demobilised as soon as they could be spared, and have
reckoned for gratuity any service up to 3rd August, 1919. There is no regulated period of notice of demobilisation.

Sir F. HALL: Is any gratuity being given to these temporary officers for services while in Ireland: if not, does the right hon. Gentleman recognise the fact that they will be getting less pay than regular officers doing the same work?

Sir L. WORTHINGTON - EVANS: The gratuity ceased on 3rd August, 1919, but for like duties I do not think they get less pay. If my hon. and gallant Friend has any particular case in mind. I shall be glad if he will let me have the particulars.

Sir F. HALL: Does the right hon. Gentleman recognise that I am speaking on general principles? Regular officers get their pensions, and, in lieu of pensions, temporary officers were getting a gratuity. If they do not get a gratuity for services while in Ireland, will not their pay be less than that of the regular officers?

Sir L. WORTHINGTON - EVANS: They receive the pay to which they are entitled under their contract. Their contract does not include gratuities, and therefore they do not get gratuities.

MILITARY ROAD (WINCIIELSEA AND RYE).

Mr. MANVILLE: 9.
asked the Financial Secretary to the War Office what amount has been received in tolls on the military road between Winchelsea and Rye during the last 15 years; how often the road has been completely repaired during that period: are the repairs now being carried out for a length of only 1,000 yards out of a total length of three miles; and, seeing that this road is an essential link on the coast road east and west, whether he will direct that the whole length of the road should be repaired?

The FINANCIAL SECRETARY to the WAR OFFICE (Lieut.-Colonel Stanley): There is no record of the amount received in tolls on the Rye-Winchelsea Road prior to 1915. For the seven years April, 1915, to March, 1922, the receipts were £3,278. An average of one-third of the whole road is put into complete repair yearly as far as revenue allows: at the present moment 900 yards run of the road are
being completely repaired out of a total length of 2,940 yards. By the Statute under which the road was constructed, the amount expended on repairs must not exceed the revenues received from tolls; subject to this statutory limitation all repairs that are practicable are carried out.

Mr. MANVILLE: Has the road been maintained out of the revenue from tolls? Considering its great importance, will my hon. and gallant Friend not hand it over to the Roads Board, so that it may be kept in a condition similar to that of the other roads in the immediate vicinity?

Lieut.-Colonel STANLEY: I should prefer to look into the matter before giving an answer. I think probably not.

Captain Viscount CURZON: Will the hon. Gentleman consider taking a personal trip along this road in a War Office car?

Lieut.-Colonel STANLEY: I would not mind doing it in a War Office car, but I will not go with the Noble Lord.

SMALL HOLDINGS, ROXBURGH.

Mr. HOGGE: 28.
asked the Secretary for Scotland what sum was paid by the Board of Agriculture to Mr. Waddell, proprietor of the Palace Estate, near Jedburgh, as compensation for 49½ acres of land acquired for a small holding there: whether he is aware that the land had been lying in grass, in a more or less derelict condition, for many years; whether the arable farms of Crailing Tofts and West Nisbet, in Teviotdale, extending to about, 650 acres, have recently been let to two brothers; and whether the Board of Agriculture had the opportunity of considering if these farms might have provided small holdings for the Roxburghshire applicants who have been waiting for land settlements for several years?

The LORD ADVOCATE (Mr. C. D. Murray): The amount paid to the proprietor as compensation in accordance with the award of the Land Court was £921 12s. 1d. In addition, sums amounting to £199 19s. 6d. and £203 18s. 4d. were paid to him by the Board for interest and legal expenses respectively. I under-
stand that the land referred to had been let annually as grass parks and was not in a derelict condition. I am informed that the present tenant of Crailing Tofts entered it in 1921 and that the farm of West Nisbet was let recently to his brother. The answer to the last part of the question is in the negative.

CEYLON (CONSTITUTION).

Colonel WEDGWOOD: 12 and 13.
asked the Secretary of State for the. Colonies (1) whether, to avoid delay and further controversy, he will lay down for the guidance of the Ceylon Constitution Committee the scope of its powers, especially in reference to the number of members of which the reformed Council is to be composed; the number of official members; the number to be elected by territorial electorates; the number to be elected by committees or interests, if any; the number of unofficial members to be nominated, if any;
(2) whether he is aware that., owing to the opposition in Ceylon to the reforms promulgated in 1920, the Governor promised the Singalese to forward to the Secretary of State within a year from the first sitting of the new Council, i.e., June, 1921, his recommendations on such amendments to the Constitution as might be brought forward by Motion in Council, giving due weight in his recommendations to the views and votes of the elected members; whether this has been done; and, if not, whether he can state the reason:

The SECRETARY of STATE for the COLONIES (Mr. Churchill): Resolutions regarding the further reform of the Constitution were brought forward in the Legislative Council in December last, and fully debated. The Governor forwarded to me the report of the Debate, with an analysis of the voting on each Resolution, and his remarks thereon. One of the Resolutions, which was carried without a Division, ran as follows:
That a scheme for the allocation and distribution of seats in territorial electorate; should be made on the recommendations of a Committee of this Council appointed for the purpose.
I approved of the appointment of this Committee, which has, I understand, now completed its report, which I am awaiting.
It would clearly be premature to come to any decision as to the numbers of the several classes of members indicated by the hon. Member before the report of the Committee is in my hands.

Colonel WEDGWOOD: Are we to understand that this Committee has merely to report the percentage of each of the different interests, and not the exact numbers?

Mr. CHURCHILL: That is my recollection.

Oral Answers to Questions — IRELAND.

MALICIOUS INJURIES.

Sir J. BUTCHER: 15.
asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether he is aware that none of the awards for malicious injuries to property, in defended cases, which the Provisional Government have promised to pay, have yet been paid; that the persons to whom these awards have been made are in sore straits for money; and that many of these persons who have landed estates are unable to get their rents paid and have mortgage interest and other charges to pay; and what steps the Government propose to take in the matter?

Mr. CHURCHILL: The answer to the first part of the question is in the affirmative. In reply to the latter part, I am aware that in some cases persons holding decrees are in great need of money, and I have already informed the House that in cases of real hardship my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer will be prepared to make advances from Imperial funds on the security of such decrees. Applications for advances in cases of hardship should be addressed to the Irish Office.

Sir F. HALL: 17.
asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies when Lord Shaw's Commission for dealing with claims of persons in Southern Ireland will resume its sittings; and whether it is the intention of the Government to make no arrangements, except with the previous sanction of Parliament, for the payment of sums to be used for the settlement of such claims otherwise than through the Commission?

Mr. CHURCHILL: In reply to the first part of the question, I do not know when
the next sitting of the Commission will be held, and I would refer the hon. and gallant Member to the Secretary of the Commission for information on this point; but, as I have on several occasions recently stated in reply to questions, there is no foundation for the suggestion that the sittings of the Commission have been suspended owing to Lord Shaw's absence in the United States. In reply to the second part of the question, the hon. and gallant Member is mistaken in thinking that any payment will be or is intended to be made through the Commission. It is for the Provisional Government, in the first instance, to pay all awards made by the Commission; and as I have recently explained to the House, arrangements have been made whereby in cases of hardship advances on such awards will be made from Imperial funds.

Captain BENN: Have the two Reports of the Commission been received, and, if so, will they be laid before Parliament? The right hon. Gentleman must know. It is a simple question.

NATIONAL STUD.

Sir J. BUTCHER: 16.
asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether the Government have, for purposes of safety, removed to this country from Southern Ireland any of the valuable stud of horses presented to the nation by Lord Wavertree?

The MINISTER of AGRICULTURE (Sir Arthur Boscawen): I have been asked to reply. No horses have been removed from the National Stud other than for sale or service. and there is no reason to anticipate that removal for other purposes will be necessary.

Sir J. BUTCHER: In view of the process of destruction of property of all sorts which is now being carried on in Ireland by these rebels, would it not be desirable for the purposes of safety to remove the more valuable horses.

Sir A. BOSCAWEN: I have, had this matter under consideration, and none of my advisers, either in this country or in Ireland, think removal is necessary.

ERSE LANGUAGE.

Sir CHARLES OMAN: 18.
asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether he has protested against the
recent attempt of the Provisional Government in Ireland to force compulsory Erse into all official correspondence, in spite of the agreement that Erse and English should be equally permissible, as exemplified in the circular of the Congested Districts Board of 11th July, directing that all official letters instead of beginning Sir and ending Your obedient servant, should be prefaced with the prescribed forms, for a lord a Higherna uasail, for a knight a ridire onóraigh, for a baronet a bharónaigh onóraigh, for a priest a áthair urramaigh, for a Protestant clergyman a dhuine uasail oirmhidinigh, for an ordinary layman a chara, and that letters should end with the words, Is mise, le meas niór, with a supplementary direction that great care must be taken to put in all the accents?

Mr. CHURCHILL: I have seen the document to which the. hon. Member refers, but I am not aware of any argument such as that suggested in the first part of the question, and even if such an agreement existed, I should not feel called upon to protest against the use by Trish Government offices of the Trish equivalents for the purely formal beginnings and endings of their letters. I do not anticipate that Irish Ministers will willingly incur the very great confusion which would inevitably result from the use of Irish for the material parts of their correspondence.

Sir C. OMAN: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the official who sent in this complaint to me, for the purpose of its being brought before the right hon. Gentleman's notice, has been murdered since the letter reached me last Monday?

Mr. CHURCHILL.: That raises a very different matter from the one contained n the question, and I should like to have notice of that.

Sir C. OMAN: Has not the right hon. Gentleman received a note which I sent him, saying that this document was to be returned to me, because it was the last reminiscence of a friend w he has been murdered since it was written to me?

Mr. CHURCHILL: No. I have not received that, but I will make inquiries.

Sir C. OMAN: Will the right hon. Gentleman inquire of his secretary,
because it was given to him, in the proper quarter on Friday last?

Mr. CHURCHILL: I will certainly make inquiries. I am surprised that in those circumstances it has not reached me.

PRISONS AND BORSTAL INSTITUTIONS.

Sir T. BRAMSDON: 19.
asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether, in view of the urgent need and insistent public demand for an inquiry into the prison system and the administration of His Majesty's prisons and Borstal institutions, he will consider the appointment of a thoroughly representative Royal Commission at an early date for this purpose?

The SECRETARY of STATE for the HOME DEPARTMENT (Mr. Shortt): The matter is under consideration, and I hope to come to a decision shortly.

Viscountess ASTOR: Will the right hon. Gentleman realise, before he does come to a decision, that no Commission can be thoroughly representative unless it have a woman on it?

Mr. FOOT: I understood the right hon. Gentleman to say that the decision was to be arrived at shortly. Is there any possibility of that decision being arrived at before the House rises on Friday?

Mr. SHORTT: I am afraid not. There are a number of matters to be settled with other Departments before a decision can be reached.

BIRTH CONTROL.

Mr. HAILWOOD: 20 and 46.
(1) asked the Home Secretary what steps, in the way of criminal proceedings, he proposes to take in order to check the seriously increasing output of obscene literature having for its object the prevention of conception;
(2) asked the Prime Minister whether the Government intends to introduce legislation, on the lines of the French law of 1920, making it a punishable offence to publish or distribute books or pamphlets advocating or teaching the prevention of conception or offering for sale or advertising the sale of articles designed for the like purpose?

Mr. SHORTT: It is the duty of the police to take proceedings in any case where books of an obscene character are being circulated, but it cannot be assumed that a Court would hold a book to be obscene merely because it deals with the subject referred to. There is no present intention of introducing legislation.

Mr. HAILWOOD: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that many of these books contain positively obscene drawings?

Mr. SHORTT: No doubt, it would be a question of fact in each case whether a book was obscene or not.

Sir J. BUTCHER: Is it possible in this connection to prevent the publication in the newspapers of very undesirable matter which is given in evidence in the Law Courts?

HON. MEMBERS: "News of the World."

Mr. W. THORNE: Is there anything published in any book worse than the proceedings in the Russell divorce case?

MOTOR CYCLES (PILLION RIDING).

Sir HENRY COWAN: 21.
asked the Home Secretary whether his attention has been called to the increasing number of fatal accidents due to pillion riding on motor cycles; and whether he proposes to take action by legislation or otherwise to prohibit this dangerous practice?

The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the MINISTRY of TRANSPORT (Mr. Neal): I have been asked to answer this question. I have no evidence that the number of such accidents is increasing, and I do not think there is sufficient ground to justify legislative action.

Sir H. COWAN: Does the hon. Gentleman read the newspapers, and is he not aware that it is impossible to read the newspapers without seeing reports of at least two or three cases such as this every week, and in most cases the victim is a woman or a girl who is carried on the pillion? Does this matter not come within the hon. Gentleman's duty?

MOTOR CARS (OBSTRUCTION PROSECUTIONS).

Viscount CURZON: 22.
asked the Home Secretary how many prosecutions of
owners or drivers of motors have been instituted since the 1st June on the charge of obstruction in the metropolitan police area?

Mr. SHORTT: From 1st June to the present date inclusive the number was 262.

PRISON GOVERNORS (PAY).

Lieut.-Col. Sir P. RICHARDSON: 23.
asked the Home Secretary whether, seeing that certain prison governors are the only class of civil servants that have received no increase in pay, apart from War bonus, since 1878, he will take such steps as will enable him to grant to them an increase in pay equivalent to that which has been granted to prison warders?

Mr. SHORTT: The whole question of the pay of prison officers is at present under consideration, but I am not yet in a position to make any further statement.

LICENSED PREMISES (HOURS OF OPENING).

Sir F. HALL: 26.
asked the Home Secretary what are the times fixed for the opening and closing of licensed premises on weekdays and on Sundays in the different licensing districts in the County of London?

Mr. SHORTT: Full particulars on this subject, will be found on pages XVI and XVII of the introduction to the Licensing Statistics, 1921, issued last month.

Sir F. HALL: Would it not have been easier for my right hon. Friend to have answered the question and given the details, so that the House would have known, without having to refer to the various pages to which he has referred?

Mr. SHORTT: It would have taken up at least ten minutes of the time of the House.

Sir F. HALL: Not the particulars for London.

Oral Answers to Questions — POST OFFICE.

SAVINGS BANK ACCOUNT (PAUL NICKLOS).

Mr. SEXTON: 29.
asked the Postmaster-General if his attention has been called
to the case of Paul Nicklos, of 3, School Street, Aintree, Liverpool. an alien of Polish birth, resident in this country for the past 30 years, who alleges that his Post Office savings of £100 has been con-fiscated by his Department to pay enemies' debts, and that this was the reply he received on sending his pass hook to London; and, if this complaint is well founded, whether he will state upon what grounds he has adopted such a course?

The POSTMASTER-GENERAL (Mr. Kellaway): In accordance with the Treaty of Peace Order, 1919, particulars of this account was notified to the Clearing Office for Enemy Debts and, upon application by that office, the balance standing in the account was transferred to it. When the depositor communicated with the savings bank he was informed of the action taken, and any application he may wish to make in the matter should be addressed to the Controller of the Clearing Office.

Mr. SEXTON: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that this man's identity bill as a member of a free nation was issued to him previous to the Treaty of Versailles, and is he also aware that the £104 confiscated represents his life savings, and under the circumstances can the right hon. Gentleman justify departmental garrotting of that character?

Mr. KELLAWAY: This is a matter in which I had no discretion. I had to act in accordance with the Act of Parliament to which I have referred.

Lieut.-Commander KENWORTHY: Is there not very wide discretion in hard cases of this sort, such as married women, and have not many wealthy people benefited under it? Why is this poor man robbed in this mean way?

Mr. KELLAWAY: I have acted in accordance with the Act of Parliament, and I have no discretion at all.

Lieut.-Commander KENWORTHY: You have.

Mr. SEXTON: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that this man is not a German, but a member of a free nation, Poland, separate altogether from Germany?

Mr. KELLAWAY: Any representations of that kind should be made to the Committee appointed under the Act to deal with the matter.

Mr. SEXTON: Who are the Committee, and where are they?

Mr. KELLAWAY: I have already given the names of the Committee.

Mr. A. M. SAMUEL: Is it not a fact that where representations are made to this Committee, if the points are proved, the Committee does give amelioration in cases such as that put forward by the hon. Member?

Mr. KELLAWAY: I believe that to be so, but obviously it is not a Post Office question. I have to act in accordance with the Act of Parliament.

IMPERIAL WIRELESS CHAIN.

Mr. HURD: 33.
asked the Postmaster-General whether he has considered the suggestion that an Imperial Wireless Council should be appointed, to include representatives of the Dominions and India, so as to establish the fullest possible co-operation in the development of wireless facilities within the Empire; and whether he can now make an announcement on the subject?

Mr. KELLAWAY: Questions of policy relating to Imperial wireless communication are at present referred to, and, subject to the Cabinet, decided by the Imperial Communications Committee, of which my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Colonies is Chairman, and on which the India Office is represented. Whether it will be desirable to include direct representation of those Dominions controlling Imperial wireless stations will be considered when the Dominions have decided upon their policy.

Mr. HURD: 34.
asked the Postmaster-General whether the representatives of the Canadian Government have yet reached this country for the discussion of Canada's relation to the Imperial wireless chain; and, if not, when they will arrive?

Mr. KELLAWAY: The answer to the first part of the question is in the negative. The Canadian Government have appointed their representatives, but, so far as I am aware, have not fixed a date for their departure.

Sir H. BRITTAIN: 35.
asked the Postmaster-General what support he is receiving from the different parts of the Empire in furtherance of the wireless chain; and what is approximately the earliest period within which this form of inter-Empire communication may he completed?

Mr. KELLAWAY: The revised scheme of Imperial wireless communications, which I described in the statement. I made to the House on the 13th ultimo, has been communicated to the Indian and Dominion Governments, and. until replies are received, I am unable to answer the hon. Member's question.

RELESS BROADCASTING.

Mr. MALONE: 36.
asked the Postmaster-General if he can supply particulars of the broadcasting services company or companies which are to be formed; whether a limit to individual holdings will be insisted on; or whether any means will be taken to ensure that these companies are not controlled by one or two of the largest firms, thereby constituting a monopoly, to the detriment of the small firms and the receivers?

Mr. PERCY: 31.
asked the Postmaster-General if negotiations for the institution of wireless broadcasting have yet reached a satisfactory conclusion, and if he can make a statement upon the matter; and whether he will arrange for a demonstration of wireless in some convenient room in the House for the information of Members?

Mr. KELLAWAY: I regret I cannot arrange for a demonstration before the Adjournment, but, subject to the consent of the authorities of the House, I will endeavour to do so in the autumn. The formation of the company, or companies, referred to is still subject to negotiation between the wireless manufacturers, and I am not able to make any further statement as to its constitution. The Articles of Association will be subject to my approval. I do not propose to impose any limit on individual holdings. Such a limitation might well result in the capital required for financing the service not being forthcoming. The security against a monopoly will lie in the fact that any bonâ fide manufacturer in this country will be eligible for membership, and apparatus manufactured by him will be admissible for use under the licence.

Mr. MALONE: Is the Government aware of the opposition to this Bill in certain quarters, and is it intended to proceed with the Wireless Bill this Session?

Mr. KELLAWAY: The only opposition of which I am aware is that indicated by the Amendments on the Order Paper.

Captain BENN: Can the right hon. Gentleman give any undertaking to lay the terms or Articles of Association before Members of this House for their consideration?

Mr. KELLAWAY: I answered that question yesterday. I said that Papers would be laid on the Table of the House.

Captain BENN: Can the right hon. Gentleman say when?

Mr. KELLAWAY: I cannot until the negotiations are completed.

Captain BENN: Before the Recess? Mr. KELLAWAY: Oh, no.

PENSION (Ma. G. W. GREEN),

Mr. R. RICHARDSON: 59.
asked the Financial Secretary to the Treasury whether he is aware that Mr. G. W. Green, superintendent warehouseman in the stamp section, General Post Office, was retired on the grounds of health on the 28th February, 1922, and that up to. the time of his death, 5th April, 1922, he had not received any payments on account of arrears of salary or pension: whether his widow applied to the Post Office, on account of financial distress, for an advance of money due, and the application was refused; and whether any payment has since been made, and, if so, when?

Mr. KELLAWAY: I have been asked to answer this question. Probate was not received until 23rd June, but payment of the amount due to the estate of the deceased officer has now been made.

Oral Answers to Questions — NAVAL AND MILITARY PENSIONS AND GRANTS.

DISABLEMENT TREATMENT Ex-PRIVATE S.DENNERIEY.

Mr. HALLS: 39.
asked the Minister of Pensions whether he is aware that ex-Private S. Dennerley, No. 33,926, who is
disabled and on a 30 per cent. pension, has been under treatment in the Royal Eye Hospital, Manchester, and had a piece of shrapnel removed, since when he has been before the local pensions committee and sent to a medical board at Bolton, but has since been informed that the pensions authority require a report from the doctor at the hospital, for which a charge of £3 3s. is made; and, as this disabled soldier is out of work, will he see that the report of the doctor concerned is obtained, and ensure that Dennerley gets fair consideration?

The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the MINISTRY of PENSIONS (Major Tryon): I am glad to be able to inform my hon. Friend that the case referred to has now been satisfactorily settled in the claimant's favour.

REGULATIONS (ALTERATIONS).

Mr. LAWSON: 41.
asked the Minister of Pensions whether he will circulate a return showing all alterations of Royal Warrants, Orders in Council, and instructions and regulations of the Ministry of Pensions or the Special Grants Committee during the past 12 months, by which any advantages, financial or otherwise, given to ex-service men have been varied or withdrawn; and whether he will state the number of persons affected by such alterations?

Major TRYON: Amendments of Royal Warrants and other Regulations of the Ministry are published in the normal course, and a new handbook consolidating the practice and administration of pensions is now in course of preparation. A special return, which, if it were not to be gravely misleading, would have also to set out all improvements in the detail of administration which have been to the advantage of pensioners, would not be commensurate in value with the labour and expense involved, My right hon. Friend is not, therefore, prepared to accept the suggestion.

Mr. LAWSON: Is the hon. and gallant Gentleman aware that many of those who are interested in the administration of pensions have considerable haziness as to the meaning of the more recent changes, and, in view of that, does the hon. and gallant Gentleman not consider it necessary to clear up this matter?
When will the handbook be ready? It is very necessary.

Major TRYON: I cannot give the hon. Member the date of the publication of the handbook, but I am in entire agreement with him that it would be of great advantage to have this new handbook Everything possible ought to be known to the pensioners, so that they can get their full rights.

Mr. C. WHITE: Will this be available for Members of Parliament?

Major TRYON: Certainly, as I have already stated.

Colonel ASHLEY: Will the hon. and gallant Gentleman, at any rate, indicate some of the improvements?

Major TRYON: I am afraid that I cannot give a detailed list in a supplementary answer, but I might mention some of them. For instance, the maxi-mum rate of dependant's need pension has been raised from 18s. to 205. That is a material improvement. The concessions granted to men suffering from tuberculosis have been extended to officers. The reorganisation of areas will save this country about £300,000 a year in the cost of administration, and in the making of final awards, a great benefit to the pensioners, we are making good progress.

Mr. LAWSON: Was the Warrant for the 12th July made in the ordinary way, because there is a considerable amount of doubt among Members of this House, as well as among war pensions associations?

Major TRYON: If the hon. Member has any doubt, and will communicate with me, I will do my best to clear up the matter.

CABINET APPOINTMENTS.

Commander BELLAIRS: 45.
asked the Prime Minister how many members there are in the present Cabinet; whether the Chief Secretary for Ireland is a member; and whether he is prepared to consider the reduction of the size of the Cabinet by pooling Departments of a somewhat similar character under a single Cabinet Minister, who would represent all these Departments in the Cabinet,
similarly to the case of the suggested Minister of Defence representing the three fighting Services?

Mr. CHAMBERLAIN (Leader of the House): The present Cabinet consists of 19 members, of whom the Chief Secretary for Ireland is one. The suggestion contained in the last part of the question seems to me to be quite impracticable.

LORDS OF THE TREASURY.

Captain BENN: 47.
asked the Prime Minister how many Lordships of the Treasury are now vacant; and why these offices are not filled?

Mr. CHAMBERLAIN: There is at present one Lordship of the Treasury vacant.

Captain BENN: Will the right hon. Gentleman kindly answer the second part of the question, why these posts in the Government are not filled?

Mr. CHAMBERLAIN: I confess that. I am surprised by the hon. and gallant Gentleman's question. I should have thought he would he more anxious to inquire why they had been filled, if they had been filled.

Captain BENN: While thanking the right hon. Gentleman for his interesting observations, may I press him to answer the question, why does he not fill the posts? Are the Government afraid of the bye-elections?

Mr. CHAMBERLAIN: Perhaps the Prime Minister is waiting for the hon. and gallant Gentleman's assistance.

Major M. WOOD: Are we to understand that the late hon. Member for Pontypridd (Mr. T. A. Lewis) is still to retain his office?

Mr. CHAMBERLAIN: He will retain it at present.

Major WOOD: Can he discharge his duties?

Oral Answers to Questions — GOVERNMENT DEPARTMENTS.

POST OFFICE (YOUTHS AND GIRLS).

Sir W. DAVISON: 32.
asked the Postmaster-General what is the salary at which youths of 18 now commence work
in the Post Office, and what was their commencing salary before the War; what is the maximum salary to which these youths normally rise; for how many hours a week are they employed: whether they are in receipt of uniform or other perquisites; and what salary is paid to girls of 14 and 16, respectively, who are being trained as telephonists?

Mr. KELLAWAY: As the answer is a long one, I hope the hon. Member will allow me to circulate it in the OFFICIAL REPORT.

Following is the answer:

The scale wage for a postman 1t years of age ranges from 18s. to 22s. a week, according to the locality in which he is employed; the remuneration, including bonus, ranges from 36s. 11d. to 45s. 2d. a week. The scale wages before the War ranged from 15s. to 19s. a week. The maximum wage, exclusive of bonus, which would be reached after from 12 to 14 years' service, ranges from 34s. to 46s. a week. The normal hours of attendance for postmen are 48 a week, inclusive of meal-times; they are provided with uniform, and enjoy certain other privileges which are granted to established civil servants in general. Girls of 14 are not trained as telephonists. The minimum age for appointment as telephonist is 16 years, and the pay during the period of training, which extends over about three months, is 10s. in inner London and elsewhere, exclusive of bonus, or 20s. 6d. in inner London and 16s. 5d. elsewhere., including bonus at the present cost of living figure. The payments will be considerably reduced when the cost of living bonus drops on the 1st September.

MINISTRY OF PENSIONS.

Mr. LAWSON: 40.
asked the Minister of Pensions how many additional responsible officers have been appointed to his Department during the past 12 months; and what number are ex-service men?

Major TRYON: Including officers appointed to ordinary vacancies, and those transferred or promoted (chiefly from the staffs of local committees) to fill posts created under the Area Reorganisation Scheme, the number appointed to posts at a salary of £400 or more during the past 12 months is 51, of whom 44 are ex-service men. The seven non-service
men appointed are all permanent civil servants transferred from other Government Departments.

Sir H. BRITTAIN: 43.
asked the Minister of Pensions the number of the staff now at work at the new Issue Office at Acton; and what number of that staff lives at or beyond a five-mile radius of this office?

Major TRYON: The staff employed at Pension Issue Office, Acton, numbers 4,878. I regret that the further information desired is not available.

Sir H. BRITTAIN: Is the hon. and gallant Gentleman doing anything from the point of view of cheap transportation of these 4,000 people, or anything in the way of housing? It is some considerable way from the centre, and many have to travel miles to and from their business.

Major TRYON: This office has only recently been started, to the great advantage of all concerned, as it brings all the work under one roof, and clears the Department out of Reagent's Park, which everyone desires.

Sir H. BRITTAIN: I raised this point over a year ago. Will the hon. and gallant Gentleman try to do something?

CUSTOMS AND EXCISE (HOURS).

Mr. RHYS DAVIES: 58.
asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether any representations have been made to him in favour of an extension of the customary hours for the performance of certain classes of duties undertaken by officers of Customs and Excise; whether he is aware of the strong feeling in that service against any such extension; and whether, if the issue is raised, he will ascertain and consider the views of the various grades of officials concerned?

The CHANCELLOR of the EXCHEQUER (Sir Robert Horne): I would refer the lion. Member to the answer given yesterday to the hon. Members for Edge-bill and East Newcastle. As I then stated, all relevant circumstances will he taken in to consideration.

TEMPORARY STAFFS (PAY).

Mr. HOGGE: 72.
asked the Financial Secretary to the Treasury whether he is prepared to agree to arbitration in
respect of the disagreement that has arisen on the Temporary Staff's Pay Committee of the National Whitley Council for the Civil Service with regard to pay?

The FINANCIAL SECRETARY to the TREASURY (Mr. Hilton Young): I have under consideration at the present time a request for arbitration in this matter, put forward by the staff side of the Temporary Staffs (Pay) Committee, and hope shortly to be in a position to communicate a decision to the Committee and to the hon. Member.

Mr. HOGGE: Will that be before the House rises?

Mr. YOUNG: I hope so.

Oral Answers to Questions — UNEMPLOYMENT.

INDIUSTRIAL AREAS (ASSISTANCE).

Mr. T. THOMSON: 49.
asked the Prime Minister whether he will refer to the Cabinet Committee on Unemployment the further consideration of the possibility of arriving at a formula whereby special financial assistance may be given to those industrial areas where the percentage of unemployment is much above the average for the rest of the country?

The MINISTER of HEALTH (Sir A. Mond): I would refer the hon. Member to my reply to his question on Tuesday, 35th July, to which I have nothing to add.

Mr. THOMSON: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that since that time the Prime Minister has announced the appointment of a new Cabinet Committee to explore this question? Will that Committee further consider the case of the necessitous areas, and will any report be made before the House meets again, or anything done?

Sir A. MOND: I think the hon. Gentleman is rather mistaken about the objects of the Cabinet Committee.

Mr. THOMSON: Does the right hon. Gentleman realise that unless something be done during the next three months, and assistance given, many of these industrial areas will be absolutely bankrupt?

Sir A. MOND: I do not think that is the case.

LOCAL COMMITTEES (NATIONAL CITIZENS' UNION).

Sir A. HOLBROOK: 79.
asked the Minister of Labour whether he will direct that application from bodies such as the National Citizens' Union shall be favourably considered for representation upon local employment committees?

The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the MINISTRY of LABOUR (Sir Montague Barlow): The local employment committees are composed of equal numbers of representatives of employers and workpeople nominated by industrial associations in the various localities, together with a small panel of additional members which provides for the representation of local authorities, of ex-service men's associations, and for the appointment of individuals recommended by the committee themselves in view of their personal knowledge of local industrial matters. There is no provision for the representation of bodies other than those referred to above, and my right hon. Friend doubts the expediency of giving the direction suggested.

Oral Answers to Questions — ROYAL AIR FORCE.

RESERVE (ANNUAL TRAINING).

Viscount CURZON: 60.
asked the Secretary of State for Air what is the proposed period of annual training which it is proposed to lay down for a pilot and an observer, respectively, in the Air Force Reserve; whether they will, during their training, have an opportunity of actually working with the Fleet; and whether Parliament will have an opportunity of considering the conditions of training, service, and Regulations for this new force before it is brought into existence?

The SECRETARY of STATE for AIR (Captain Guest): The answer to the first question is that 12 hours' flying in all, on up-to-date war-type machines, will have to be completed in each year, in periods of not less than two nor more than six days in each quarter; to the second, that reserve officers who have served with the Fleet will be given practice in flying on and off aircraft carriers, and, further, that advantage will be taken of any opportunities that may arise for practising them in actual work with the Fleet; to the last, that, as pointed out to my Noble and
gallant Friend on the 27th July, the reserve is not a new force and that the conditions of service and general Regulations were laid before Parliament on 7th February last.

PILOTS.

Viscount CURZON: 61.
asked the Secretary of State for Air what is considered to be the flying life of a pilot in the Royal Air Force; whether any difference exists between the flying life of a pilot working with the Royal Navy, the Royal Air Force, and the Army; and how long is required to train a pilot to work from an aircraft carrier?

Captain GUEST: The answer to the first question is that no statistics are available to enable art exact statement to be made as to the flying life of a pilot, and to attempt to strike an average would be very misleading owing to the wide variations that are mil with. There is no reason, however, au officer of the Royal Air Force should not continue flying throughout his service; many of the senior officers of the !loyal Air Force are flying regularly to-day.
As regards the second question, so far as experience has gent, at present, there is no reason to suppose that there is any difference in the flying life of a pilot whether working with the Royal Navy, the Army, or the Royal Air Force.
The answer to the last question is three months on an average

HAGUE CONFERENCE.

Lieut.-Commander KENWORTHY: 50.
asked the Prime Minister whether it is the intention of His Majesty's Government to publish in fall the minutes of the meetings held at The Hague Conference; and, if so, whether the documents will be published before the Recess?

Mr. CHAMBERLAIN: I would refer the hon. and gallant Member to the answer which my right hon. Friend gave him yesterday. I do not think these documents will be available before the Recess.

Oral Answers to Questions — PEACE TREATIES.

GERMAN REPARATION.

Colonel WEDGWOOD: 51.
asked the Prime Minister whether the French
Government have made any intimation that they propose to act independently about fresh territorial sanctions if the monthly indemnity is not paid when due?

MR. CHAMBERLAIN: No, Sir.

Lieut.-Commander KENWORTHY: 55.
asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether any alteration in the policy of His Majesty's Government with regard to the Reparation Clauses of the Treaty of Versailles is in contemplation?

Sir R. HORNE: I would ask the hon. Member to await the statement that will be made during the Debate on the Appropriation Bill.

Lieut.-Commander KENWORTHY: Yes, but is the right hon. Gentleman aware that we are not going to get a statement, but that the Prime Minister is going to wait for observations and criticisms and will then engage in the usual forensic display, and are we not to have an authoritative statement from any hon. Member of the Government?

Sir R. HORNE: If the hon. and galland Gentleman puts his questions well in Debate, no doubt he will get a reply.

Lieut.-Commander KENWORTHY: No! Questions are put, but never answered by the prime Minister.

BANKERS'COMMITTEE.

Mr. MALONE: 66.
asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether, with a view to the revival of European trade and industry, he will represent to the Reparation Commission the desirability of immediately asking the Bankers' Committee appointed by the Commission to resume their inquiries in order to ascertain what sum is within the capacity of Germany to pay, and to make proposals regarding the definite fixing of Germany's cash obligations and the financial steps required to meet the situation?

Sir R. HORNE: I would ask the hon. Member to await the statement that will be made during the Debate on the Appropriation Bill.

HOUSE OF COMMONS (NEWS-PAPER REPORTS).

Mr. MALONE: 52.
asked the Prime Minister if His Majesty's Government is aware of the inaccuracy of the reports of the proceedings of this House which appear in the newspapers; that speeches are frequently censored, mis-quoted, or omitted altogether in order to support the special political views of any particular newspaper; and that, to the bulk of uninitiated readers, the official form and appearance of the columns headed "Parliament" appear to be in the nature of a. semi-official report; whether, while leaving complete freedom to editors in regard to comments in editorial columns, political notes, and elsewhere, he will support legislation to prohibit the publication in the public Press of these misleading reports; and if he will appoint a small Committee, under the control of Mr. Speaker, to arrange for the issue each day of a non-party and unbiassed summary of the Debates on each day's sitting?

Mr. CHAMBERLAIN: The answer is in the negative.

INCOME TAX (J. MURDOCK).

Mr. SEXTON: 53.
asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer if his attention has been called to the case of Joseph Murdock, of 110, Chesterton Street, Garston, Liverpool, a casual dock labourer, who was imprisoned for non-Payment of Income Tax for 28 days on the 10th July; that this is his second term of imprisonment for non-payment; that he is an ex-service man and served all through the War on active service; and if, in view of the fact that such employment is intermittent in character, and that such men's whole future earnings is mortgaged by demands for Income Tax, he car, see his way to secure this man's release and take the necessary steps to prevent imprisonment in similar cases in future?

Sir R. HORNE: The arrears of tax for which proceedings were taken in this case relate to the year 1920–21. I understand that Mr. Murdock is a capstan-man employed by the London and North Western Railway Company. I am informed that the amount of his earnings during each of the last two years
was quite sufficient to enable him to pay his Income Tax quarter by quarter had he wished to do so. He appears to have received every consideration in the course of the proceedings before the Justices, which were adjourned on two occasions to give him an opportunity of stating his case.

Mr. SEXTON: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that, according to the assessment in this and other cases, this unfortunate man is assessed in a lean quarter on the previous fat quarter, and that the earnings of the fat quarter go to pay the assessment, and the arrangement works out that subsequently, being assessed in a lean quarter, the man has no money to pay? [HON. MEMBERS: "Genesis!"]

Sir R. HORNE: All that doubtless would be taken into consideration by Inland Revenue Authorities, and I am informed that this man was in a position to pay his Income Tax whether the quarter was lean or fat.

BRITISH DEBT (UNITED STATES).

Lieut.-Commander KENWORTHY: 54.
asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether any further steps have been taken with regard to the arrangements for funding our debt to the United States of America?

Sir R. HORNE: I have nothing to add to the answer given to the hon. and gallant Member by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister on the 17th July, except that to meet the convenience of the United States Government the Delegation's arrival in Washington has been postponed until the end of September.

Lieut.-Commander KENWORTHY: Is any change contemplated in that Delegation, and is any Member of His Majesty's Government going to the United States?

Sir R. HORNE: It is very difficult to say whether there is any change in the Delegation, which has not yet been appointed.

Colonel WEDGWOOD: When may we expect to see the letter that has been circulated, we understand, by this Government to the various Powers, written by the Earl of Balfour and mentioned in to-day's Press?

Sir R. HORNE: The document to which the hon. and gallant Gentleman refers is the one, I suppose, that has been communicated to France and to certain other Governments in Europe. It. will, I think, be laid—

Mr. CHAMBERLAIN: No, circulated. Sir R. HORNE: Circulated to-morrow.

Lieut. - Commander KENWORTHY: What about the second part of the question: Is any member of His Majesty's Government going on this important mission, and who will it be?

Sir R. HORNE: That remains to be decided.

Sir H. BRITTAIN: Has it been decided to do anything with the United States before we have definitely decided as to the Continental debts?

Sir R. HORNE: It has been decided—and announced to the House—to send a, Delegation to the United States to discuss with the American Government the question of the funding of the Debt.

Sir H. BRITTAIN: Will any definite agreement be arrived at with the United States before the Delegation goes?

Major M. WOOD: 57.
asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether the differences between the United States Shipping Board and the Ministry of Shipping have now been settled; and, if so, for what amount?

The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the BOARD of TRADE (Sir W. Mitchell-Thomson): I have been asked to reply. An agreement was entered into on the 13th July with the United States Shipping Board for settlement of certain outstanding claims by a payment to the Shipping Board of 12 million dollars, including interest. This settlement excluded certain claims by the late Ministry of Shipping in connection with ex-German vessels which had been used by the United States Government, and another claim in which the Shipping Board was an intermediary.

Major M. WOOD: Can the hon. Gentleman say whether it is a fact that the United States some time ago offered to accept a very much smaller sum? Is that so? If so, why was the sum mentioned not accepted by the Government?

Sir W. MITCHELL-THOMSON: I think I can safely say that is not the Case.

Mr. HOGGE: Is it not the fact that the late Mr. Raeburn refused an offer from the United States Shipping Board of 44> million dollars, and afterwards the thing was settled at 12 million dollars: why is the taxpayer to pay that loss?

Sir W. MITCHELL-THOMSON: I should like notice of a question in which these various figures are involved.

Captain BENN: Will a Supplementary Estimate be laid for this sum of 12 million dollars?

Sir W. MITCHELL-THOMSON: Yes, Sir.

IRISH CATTLE (DETENTION).

Lieut.-Colonel A. MURRAY: 59.
asked the Minister of Agriculture whether he is aware that the conditions under which, within the ambit of existing Regulations, cattle from Ireland after disembarkation at Scottish ports are forwarded inland and isolated provide no real safeguard against the spread of foot-and-mouth disease if present; and whether, in these circumstances, he will allow free movement of cattle, as formerly, after landing?

Sir A. BOSCAWEN: No, Sir, I am satisfied that the Regulations in question, which ensure a period of detention of 14 days for Irish cattle which have either been sold at the ports or moved direct to farms, thus checking their movement from market to market, do provide a real safeguard against the dissemination of foot-and-mouth disease. The answer to the last part of the question is therefore, in the negative.

Lieut.-Colonel MURRAY: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that, without accomplishing its object, these Regulations have a dislocating effect on the inland cattle trade, and could he not make some alteration?

Sir A. BOSCAWEN: The inland cattle trade would be much more dislocated if we allowed the methods to prevail which spread disease from place to place, as was the case before we introduced the necessary Regulations.

Oral Answers to Questions — EDUCATION.

ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS (STAFFING).

Mr. CAIRNS: 63.
asked the President of the Board of Education if, in view of his statement in a speech at Kingston some time ago to the effect that there are certain areas in the country where the staffing arrangements in schools are now upon a somewhat lavish scale, and where such reductions can be effected without loss of national efficiency, he will explain where the staffing arrangements are upon a lavish scale?

The PRESIDENT of the BOARD of EDUCATION (Mr. Herbert Fisher): The question whether the staffing of the public elementary schools in a. particular area is in any degree excessive is one which requires most careful consideration, and can only be decided satisfactorily after consultation between the authority and His Majesty's inspector, with due regard to all relevant local circumstances, including the character of the school buildings, the quality of the staff available, and the needs of the children. The Board have been in communication with a certain number of authorities upon this question already, and propose to pursue it further; but it is a matter with which I can hardly deal in the limits of question and answer in this House.

Mr. CAIRNS: Before the right hon. Gentleman made that statement, did he acquaint himself with the facts?

Mr. FISHER: Of course.

INFANTS' ASSISTANTS, LONDON.

Mr. W. THORNE: 64.
asked the President of the Board of Education if he is aware that the London County Council are about to appoint 100 unqualified women teachers to teach children in compulsory schools, and who are to be designated infants' assistants; that the commencing salary to be paid is:£110 per annum rising by annual increments of £7 10s. to a maximum of £155 per annum; and, in view of the insufficiency of this salary for such teachers, will he take action in the matter?

Mr. FISHER: The answer to the first and second parts of the question are in the affirmative. The proposals of the London County Council, which affect children under five years of age only, will
receive my very careful attention. I cannot accept the hon. Member's suggestion that the proposed salary is insufficient; indeed, the commencing salary exceeds that which the Board would be prepared to recognise this year in the ease of a newly-appointed uncertificated teacher, on Scale IV of the Burnham Committee.

Mr. THORNE: Does the right hon. Gentleman think that when these unqualified teachers have reached the maximum of £155 per annum, which is about £3 per week, they can clothe and feed themselves decently on that amount?

Viscountess ASTOR: Does the right hon. Gentleman really think that it is wise to have unqualified women to teach the children?

Lieut.-Colonel ARCHER-SHEE: Is it not a fact that £155 a year is a great deal more than other teachers dealing with children under five years of age get outside the London County Council?

Mr. FISHER: The answer to the second question is in the affirmative. With regard to the first question, other things being equal, a trained teacher is better than an untrained teacher. I understand that the London County Council propose to put these women through a short course of training. The experience of the infant classes during the War leads one to suppose that suitable women of the required temperament, after a short training, can deal very satisfactorily with infant classes.

PROVISION OF MEALS.

Mr. T. THOMSON: 65.
asked the President of the Board of Education whether in those districts where it could be shown that, owing to continued distress caused by prolonged unemployment, the number of children who, on account of lack of food, were unable to take full advantage of the educational training provided, was greater than last year, he would, in those districts, consent, to a smaller proportionate reduction on their last year's expenditure on school feeding being made than in districts where unemployment was not so pronounced?

Mr. FISHER: In allocating the limited sum placed at their disposal by Parliament for aiding the provision of
meals by local education authorities, the Board will have regard to all the relevant circumstances of each area, including the extent and incidence of unemployment, subject. always to observance of the principle that it is not proper for a local education authority to incur expenditure on the provision of meals out of the education rate and with the aid of education grants in order to relieve destitution.

Mr. THOMSON: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the recent circular sent to the local authorities is causing considerable consternation because it cuts down the very limited amount which they are allowed to spend on food when unemployment is increasing, and can he allow these districts to have a larger proportion of the grant than in those areas where the unemployment is below the average?

Mr. FISHER: We shall carefully take into account the circumstances of each particular area. We now have certain areas under our very close consideration.

Mr. R. RICHARDSON: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that in certain areas the guardians and the local education authorities are at variance as to whose duty it is to feed the children?

JUNIOR TECHNICAL SCHOOL (REGULATIONS).

Mr. MYERS: 66.
asked the President of the Board of Education whether the Regulations for junior technical schools are now being revised; it so, whether he will undertake to permit generally the inclusion of a foreign language in the curriculum of such schools on account of the educational value and irrespective of any vocational value; and whether the Regulation that parents should undertake to place their sons in artisan employment as a condition of entry to a junior technical school will he relaxed in order that lads who later desire a wider choice of employment may be free to exercise such choice?

Mr. FISHER: The revision of the Regulations for junior technical schools is closely connected with the larger question of revising the whole body of Regulations for technical and further education, a matter that is continually engaging the attention of the Board. The special aim of these schools, as distinguished
from secondary schools, is to prepare pupils by courses of two or three years' instruction for artisan and other industrial employment and domestic employment. I am not at present convinced that the time given in junior technical schools to English subjects or to practical subjects could with educational advantage be reduced for all pupils to the extent which would be essential for effective instruction in a foreign language. If there are in these schools individual pupils of exceptional ability who wish to learn a foreign language, I see no reason to think that their requirements could not be sufficiently met by special arrangements which would leave the ordinary curriculum of the school intact. The Regulation referred to in the third part of the question (Part H, No. 6 (g) requires a parent to certify at the time of the admission of the pupil to the school, that he is intending to enter into employment for which the school provides preparation. I will consider whether the present Regulation is more than is necessary to effect the purpose in view.

Mr. MYERS: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the hedging round of these Regulations with so many qualifications is preventing desirable students from taking advantage of the educational facilities which are available; and, in framing any further Regulations on this question, will he take such steps as will disabuse the public mind Of the widespread belief that these Regulations are being deliberately made restrictive as far as they can be?

Mr. FISHER: The hon. Member has been entirely misinformed. These junior technical schools exist in order to give technical instruction to young people who are desirous of entering trades. It would be a great waste of money to give a course intended to lead up to the building trade to somebody who was not intending to enter it.

Oral Answers to Questions — ROYAL NAVY.

BATTLE OF JUTLAND (OFFICIAL HISTORY).

Commander BELLAIRS: 67.
asked the Parliamentary Secretary to the Admiralty, in view of the fact that two months have elapsed since the official narrative and charts of the Battle of Jutland were sent to Lord Jellicoe in New Zealand,
whether he can indicate when the public issue is likely to take place?

The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the ADMIRALTY (Mr. Amery): The narrative should be ready for publication about a month after its return, provided no extensive alterations in the text are considered necessary as a result of any observations which Lord Jellicoe may make.

SHIPS' BOATS.

Sir A. SHIRLEY BENN: 68.
asked the Parliamentary Secretary to the Admiralty how many ships' boats, with their gear, are laid up in His Majesty's dockyards surplus to requirements; and what is the approximate annual cost of their upkeep?

Mr. AMERY: As the reply is somewhat long, I will, with my hon. Friend's permission, circulate it in the OFFICIAL REPORT.

The following is the reply:

Excluding those which are in process of being sold, the following pulling and sailing boats in sea service (repairable) condition are surplus to requirements, and will he disposed of:

8 Galleys.
2 Whalers.
4 Cutter Gigs.
36 Collapsibles.

There are also the following surplus boats which are in harbour service (repairable) condition, i.e., boats which, after repair, would be suitable for harbour service, but not for issue to His Majesty's ships:

12 Launches.
20 Pinnaces, sailing.
33 Cutters.
6 Cutter Gigs.
1 Galley.
17 Whalers.
16 Gigs.

There are also 75 twenty-feet motor boats surplus to present requirements, but many of these will be absorbed during 1922–23 and 1923–24, and the remainder will be sold. A preliminary selection of boats for ultimate sale is now being made.

Reconditioning is only undertaken as boats are brought forward for service, and no expenditure is, therefore, incurred in the maintenance of surplus boats.

Sir A. SHIRLEY BENN: Is the right hon. Gentleman prepared to consider leasing some of these boats in their present condition?

Mr. AMERY: I will consider that.

EX-SERVICE MEN (CIVIL SERVICE).

Colonel Sir A. HOLBROOK: 70.
asked the Financial Secretary to the Treasury the amount of actual salary paid in Grades 1, 2 and 3, respectively, to ex-service temporary men on being admitted to the permanent service?

Mr. YOUNG: The initial salary in each case, inclusive of bonus at current rates, of ex-service men appointed from the under-mentioned temporary grades to the clerical class in London under the limited competitions is:

Grade I
£200


Grade II
£184 10s.


Grade III
£164

The scale of the clerical class rises by increments for each year of approved service to a maximum of £250 plus bonus, or X416 in all at current rates.

Sir A. HOLBROOK: 71.
asked the Financial Secretary to the Treasury whether evidence was heard by the Lytton Committee from staff associations on the question of initial salary on admission to the Civil Service; whether the Lytton Committee was aware that an agreement had been reached by the National Whitley Council on the question of pay for civil servants and whether, in view of the fact that a member of the Lytton Committee has stated publicly that they came to a decision without being placed in possession of such evidence, His Majesty's Government are prepared to set up any machinery of investigation which will enable ex-service men to state their case, having special regard to the letter issued by the arbitration board to the effect that the scales laid down would cause considerable hardship in a large number of cases?

Mr. YOUNG: The answer to the first and second parts of the question is in the affirmative. This question was carefully considered by the Lytton Committee, which heard full evidence in support of the men's case. His Majesty's Government accepted the Committee's recom-
mendation, which was subsequently endorsed by the Civil Service Arbitration Board, and in the circumstances I am unable to agree that the question should be reopened.

EXPORT CREDITS SCHEMES.

Sir ROBERT CLOUGH: 74.
asked the President of the Board of Trade whether his Department is intending to help to finance a wool-combing mill in Canada and, if so, can he state if such assistance is being given in connection with the export credits scheme or otherwise?

Sir W. MITCHELL-THOMSON: No. application has been received by the Export Credits Department for assistance in respect of a wool-combing mill in Canada.

Sir R. CLOUGH: 76.
asked the Parliamentary Secretary to the Overseas Trade Department what assistance, under the export credits scheme, has been recommended by his Department for the purpose of providing machinery either for parts of the British Empire or for foreign countries: how many of such recommendations have been acted upon; and what is the aggregate value of all such sanctioned credits?

Sir W. MITCHELL-THOMSON: A very considerable amount of time and labour would be involved in compiling the information asked for by my hon. Friend in regard to credits sanctioned in respect of machinery, and I should be grateful if he would not press me for it. The total amount of credits, including both advances and guarantees actually taken up by exporters in respect of machinery including railway material, is £164,408, of which £3,492 were for exports to various parts of the British Empire, and £160,916 were for exports to foreign countries.

SHIP'S TOBACCO (PRICES).

Mr. R. RICHARDSON: 75.
asked the-President of the Board of Trade whether he is aware that masters of ships are charging the members of their crews as much as 2s. 6d. for 50 cigarettes, 7s. 6d. per lb. for hard tobacco, and 12s. per lb. for soft tobacco, and that these prices are over 100 per cent. more than is paid for these articles, he being allowed to take
them out of bond duty free; and will he say what inquiry he has made into this matter and what action, if any, he proposes to take to bring to end this extortion from a body of workpeople?

Sir W. MITCHELL-THOMSON: I have received complaints as to the prices charged for tobacco and cigarettes to members of the crew on board ship. The Board of Trade have been in communication with the Customs and find that there is no power to control the prices charged on board ship. Any action taken, therefore, must be voluntary action on the part of shipowners and shipmasters, and the Board of Trade will place it before the associations of shipowners and shipmasters and officers for their consideration.

Mr. R. RICHARDSON: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware the men complain that the shipmasters are getting enough out of this to pay for their own wines and cigars? Can he not consider the matter from that point of view?

Sir W. MITCHELL-THOMSON: I have said I am taking steps to place this matter before the associations of shipowners and shipmasters and officers.

DIVORCE PROCEEDINGS (PUBLICATION OF EVIDENCE).

Sir EVELYN CECIL: 77.
asked the Attorney-General whether he is aware that in various countries, for instance Sweden and Switzerland, the publication of the details of divorce proceedings is very strictly regulated; Whether he will consider if their publication broadcast in this country is really essential to assure the best administration of justice and if any advantage gained is not more than counterbalanced by the tendency to degrade public morality; and whether he will carefully look into any proposals to alter the present law in this respect?

The ATTORNEY - GENERAL (Sir Ernest Pollock): I have ascertained that in Sweden in all cases concerning the validity of a. marriage, the nullity of a marriage, separation and divorce, the Court may, at the request of one of the parties, decide to proceed in camera; and that in Switzerland divorce proceedings are heard by the Court. in
camera. I will consider the matters suggested in the question very carefully, and will be pleased to look into any proposals that may be made to me on this difficult question.

RAILWAY RATES.

Mr. M. STEVENS: 78.
asked the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Transport whether he will look at the records of the last revision of railway charges, 1890–92, and have statistical tables and information, similar to the tables and statistical information then found requisite, forthwith prepared with figures for the year 1913, and so enable the railway companies and the traders the more accurately to formulate their proposals when assisting in the fixing of the standard rates and the other charges provided for in The Railways Act, 1921; and, as the conveyance by railway is the main factor to provide for, will he, when publishing receipts per ton-mile, first of all delete from those receipts all expenditure of the railway companies upon terminals, both station and service, cartage, warehousing, docks, harbour, steamship, and every other expenditure not directly incurred in the cost. of conveying merchandise by railway, so that the receipt of the railway companies from their only monopoly, service of conveyance by railway, may become available to traders before the revision and to the Railway Rates Tribunal during the revision?

Mr. NEAL: As I have already indicated in answer to a previous question, the statutory powers vested in the Minister are being exercised. In the same answer I also explained the scope of the information now being compiled, and I have no doubt that the Rates Tribunal will consider the necessity for further information, including that referred to by the hon. Member.

Mr. STEVENS: Does not my hon. Friend see from the question that the information is required before the Rating Tribunal makes its inquiry? All that is asked for from his Statistical Department is the same information which the railway companies had prepared for themselves at the last revision of rates.

Mr. NEAL: I quite understand that.

Mr. STEVENS: Can we have that information?

Mr. NEAL: We shall do our best to supply all the information in our power.

EXCHANGE (GREAT BRITAIN AND PORTUGAL).

Sir R. CLOUGH: 80.
asked the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he is aware that the Portuguese Government has recently fixed the. rate of exchange between Great Britain and Portugal at 4d. per escudo, whereas the real effective rate of exchange is round about 3¾ to 31d; and, seeing that this fixation of 4d. means a loss of nearly ¼. on every 4d., and, as the result, merchants in Bradford are unable to obtain payments of goods, as the banks naturally refuse to purchase sterling at the indicated loss, or, alternatively, must be prepared to forego the difference between the current and the official rates of exchange, which means a loss of £60 to £80 in every £1,000, and bearing in mind the fact that this difference absorbs all the profit on many transactions, will he make representations to the Portuguese Government to induce it to reconsider the whole matter in the interests of trade between the two countries?

Sir W. MITCHELL-THOMSON: I have been asked to reply. Complaints have reached me that action has been taken in Portugal on the lines indicated in the question, but I have received no official information on the subject. I am, however, having inquiries made, and will communicate the result to my hon. Friend. Meanwhile any further statement would be premature.

SOUTH AFRICAN CATTLE EMBARGO.

Sir RICHARD COOPER: 11.
asked the. Secretary of State for the Colonies if he intends to authorise the free importation of cattle from South Africa into Great Britain; and when the Order will come into force?

Sir A. BOSCAWEN: I have been asked to reply. Under existing legislation I have no power to authorise the free importation of cattle from South Africa, except for slaughter at the ports of landing.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE.

Colonel WEDGWOOD: May I ask the Leader of the House how far he proposes to go with the Business on the Paper to-day?

Mr. CHAMBERLAIN: I propose to ask the House to take the first five. Orders to-night, none of which, if they be treated in the spirit in which the House has lately pursued its business, is likely to occupy any large space of time.

Mr. HOGGE: What about last night?

Mr. CHAMBERLAIN: If there be time available, we shall then be prepared to give facilities for the Motion on the Report of the Select. Committee on Estimates, of which the right hon. Baronet the Member for the City of London (Sir F. Banbury) has given notice, and in which hon. Members on both sides are interested. The only other business is a drafting Amendment which has come down from another place to the Criminal Law Amendment Bill.

Mr. HOGGE: Put it on the Paper.

WAR CHARGES (VALIDITY) BILL,

"to make valid certain charges imposed and levies made during the late War, "presented by Mr. BALDWIN; supported by Sir Leslie Scott, Mr. Hilton Young, and Sir William Mitchell-Thomson; to be read a Second time To-morrow, and to be printed. [Bill 224.]

MESSAGE FROM THE LORDS.

That they have agreed to,

Representation of the People (No. 4) Bill,

British Nationality and Status of Aliens Bill,

Norfolk Fisheries Provisional Order Bill,

Taw and Torridge Fisheries Pro visional Order Bill,

Towy Fisheries: Provisional Order Bill, without Amendment.

Expiring Laws, Bill. With an Amendment.

Amendments to.

Chester Gas Bill [Lords],

Wear Navigation and Sunderland Dock (Consolidation and Amendment) Bill [lords], without Amendment.

EXPIRING LAWS BILL.

Lords Amendment to be considered Tomorrow, and to be printed.[Bill 225.]

Orders of the Day — MR. HORATIO BOTTOMLEY EXPELLED THE HOUSE.

Order read for Attendance of Mr. Horatio Bottomley.

Mr. SPEAKER: I have received a letter from Mr. Bottomley, which I will read to the House.

Letter read, as followeth—

"To the Right Hon.

The SPEAKER,

House of Commons.

"Sir,

"I have been acquainted with the invitation to attend in my place on Tuesday, when I gather that a Motion will be made for my expulsion from the House. It was my earnest desire to avail myself of this opportunity of placing before my fellow-Members certain aspects of recent events, in the hope that they might have been induced to modify any adverse view which they had formed, and were justified in forming, having regard to what has happened, to place me in my present position. But I regret that I am unable to leave the hospital, and, in these circumstances, I crave leave, Sir, through you, to place a short statement before the House.

"I desire first of all, Sir, to express my deep sorrow at having brought this slur upon the House of Commons, which I can honestly say I have loved, as I have loved my country and my King. To be a Member of it was the dream of my youth and the joy of my manhood; and to my dying day it will be an ever-abiding grief that I have in any way been the cause of sullying its fair name.

"But if the truth were known, Sir, as some day it may be, I believe the House, in its generosity, would grant me not only its forgiveness, but also its sympathy. It would be futile at this stage, and possibly irregular, to reopen the sordid proceedings with which the public have been nauseated, and which have kept me on the rack for the past. year. A Jury has found me guilty, as, indeed, is not surprising after the strong direction of the
learned Judge who tried the case; and the Court of Appeal has not seen its way to uphold certain objections, taken on the advice of eminent Counsel, and having nothing to do with the merits of the case, to the conduct of the trial; whilst the learned Attorney-General, in his discretion, has declined to issue his fiat, without which an appeal to the House of Lords is impossible, despite the fact that the application for such fiat was supported by one of the greatest lawyers at the Bar to-day. And so, Sir, the matter rests there, and I do not see how the House, in the circumstances, can be asked to depart from its usual practice in such cases.

"But, Sir, that fact does not debar me, while still a Member, from giving my solemn assurance, in the name of everyone and everything which I cherish and hold dear on earth, and on my soul and honour, that, whatever irregularities there may have been, and however unorthodox may have been my methods, in the conduct of concerns carried on, more or less, in contravention of ancient laws (but with the most patriotic motives, yielding the Government large sums when money was sorely needed), I have not been guilty of any conscious fraud. Sir, I have always endeavoured to respect the amenities of the House, and I would rather my tongue were torn out by the roots than tell it a lie, nor am I a canting religionist. But there is one word I never take in vain, and I ask leave to quote the concluding sentence of my evidence at the trial— I swear before God,' I said, that I have never attempted to make a penny out of the clubs, and I swear before God that I have never done so.' Sir, those solem. words, after two months' solitary confinement in a prison cell for 23 out of every 24 hours, and much searching of spirit, I repeat to-day. The truth of them will be put to the test, the searching test, in proceedings now pending in the Court of Bankruptcy, to which I have been driven mainly owing to financial sacrifices I have made for the benefit of the very concerns I am said to have robbed.

"But, Sir, it is all my own fault, and I bear nobody any My only regret is that I am no longer free to assist in clearing up the confusion and
chaos which have arisen, and to do something to relieve any cases of hardship which may remain, but the number and extent of which have been greatly exaggerated. Still, if I live through my sentence, and am fortunate enough to retain my strength and mental faculties, that work will be my first care.

"In the meantime, I must submit to the cruel fate which has overtaken me, and of which to-day's action of the House is by far the most painful part. To me, Sir, expulsion from the House of Commons is a punishment greater and more enduring than any sentence which a Court of Law could decree. It is the very refinement, the apotheosis of torture, and, added to the strain and suffering of prison life, equals any torment any man has ever been called upon to endure. But, Sir, as I have said, I have but myself to blame, and all I can do is to ask hon. Members to judge of me as they knew me. Then perhaps some of them may give a kindly thought to an old colleague, who never played them false, and endeavoured to act up to the best traditions of the House.

"And now, Sir, it only remains for me to thank you and all the officials of the House for the courtesy and kindness I always received during my 12 years of membership; and, reiterating with all the solemnity which would be possible if they were the last words ever to pass my lips, that, entirely due to my own fault, I am the victim of an appalling error of justice, I beg, through you, Sir, to bid the House a respectful and an affectionate farewell.

"Your obedient Servant,

"(Signed) HORATIO 13orromEy." 29th July, 1922."

Ordered, "That the letter of Mr. Justice Salter of the 29th May last. to Mr. Speaker be now read."—[Mr. Chamberlain.]

The Clerk of the House (Sir T. LONSDALE WEBSTER) read the letter, as followeth:

"Central Criminal Court,

"City of London, E.C.4. "29th May, 1922."

"To the Right Honourable the Speaker

of the House of Commons.

SIR,

"I have to inform you that Horatio Bottomley, a Member of the House of

Commons, was convicted before me at this Court to-day of misdemeanour, and was sentenced to seven years' penal servitude.

"I am, Sir,

"Your obedient Servant,

"A. C. SALTER."

Mr. CHAMBERLAIN (Leader of the House): I beg to move, "That Mr. Bottomley be expelled this House."
I suppose that no more painful duty can fall to the Leader of the House for the time being than to make such a Motion in relation to a Member of this House. It would be infinitely more painful to me if I thought that the House would expect me to traverse the ground covered by the letter which has been read from the Chair, to comment on any of the pleas put forward by the hon. Member, or to point out any of the inaccuracies of fact into which he has fallen. I conceive that this House would never desire to question, in respect of one of its Members, that which it upholds as regards all other citizens—the sanctity of the administration of justice by our public Courts of Law. And that the only possible ground on which it. could interfere in a case of this kind would be if it appeared to the House that the privileges of the House, and the duties of a Member to and in the House, were in some way affected by the judgment. Not conceiving that the present is a case of that. kind, I confine myself, as I hope the House will allow me to do, simply to moving the Motion which I have made.

Lieut.-Colonel J. WARD: I only rise to say one or two words. I was waiting for the Leader of the House, not merely to say that he moved this Motion, and that it was a painful duty to him, but that he at least did it with regret. This man, whom we are now proposing to expel, has never spoken two words to me of which I know. He probably was a greater stranger to me than to any other Member of this House. Yet for some reason or other, remembering the remarkable position which he occupied in the country, I cannot allow him to be expelled without at least expressing n v personal regret at the necessity.

Question put, and agreed to.

Resolved, "That. Mr. Horatio Bottomley be expelled this House."

CONSTABULARY (IRELAND) BILL.

Order for consideration of Lords Amendments read.

Mr. SPEAKER: It is my duty to point out to the House that a considerable number of the Amendments which have come from the other House are privilege Amendments. They propose to increase the charges upon the subject.

The CHIEF SECRETARY for IRELAND (Sir Hamar Greenwood): I beg to move, "That the Lords Amendments be now considered."
I should like to remind the House of the history of this Bill. The Bill to disband the Royal Irish Constabulary passed this House, and passed the Committee upstairs, without a Division. It went to another place, where it was referred, under a peculiar rule of the other place, to a Select Committee, and that Select Committee reported to their Lordships' House. Owing to a misunderstanding, no representatives of the Government were included on it, and it can be presumed, therefore, that the Select Committee was absolutely independent. I should like the House to bear with me for a moment while I read the Report of the Select Committee to the House of Lords. It runs as follows:—
According to the Return laid upon the Table of the House this day, showing the rates of pay and the maximum and minimum compensation payable on disbandment to officers and constables of the Royal Irish Constabulary, the scales of pensions appear to be liberal in most cases, though it is possible that the smaller pensions may in some instances be insufficient unless these men are able to find immediate employment. They can, however, he supplemented in case of necessity by the action of the Tribunal.
4.0 P.M.
I read that with gratification. Because it bears out that upon which, I believe, everyone who has studied this question is now in agreement with me, namely, that the treatment of this great Force has been on a generous, though not too generous scale, having regard to the splendid services they have rendered to the Government and to this country. The criticism now resolves itself into criticism of particular cases, and I shall deal with them during the course of my short opening speech or on Amendments as they come before the House. Let me say that I know of no
case of special hardship arising out of the disbandment of the Royal Irish Constabulary which cannot be dealt with under the Bill and under the terms of disbandment, which were laid on the Table of the House and communicated to the Members of the Force some months ago. I think it would be helpful if I made a very general statement dealing with their Lordships' Amendments to the Bill, but, before I do that, I hope the House will permit me to give some statistics of the Force and its disposition at present. One is often asked how many of the Royal Irish Constabulary have come to this country. It is impossible to give the exact number, but, in my opinion, it is well below 2,000 out of a total number of over 8,000. We have provided homes—either cottages or suitable lodgings—for some 763 men, 87 women, and 171 children in different parts of Great Britain, and we have, in addition, accommodation for nearly 2,000 which is more accommodation than will probably be ever asked for. Some 756 ex-members of the Force have received commutation for emigration purposes and some 86 have received commutation for the purpose of buying a business or some other interest in this country. I would like to read to the House two or three short letters from members of the Force settled in this country, so that the House may know, as I am sure they wish to know, that these men have been properly dealt with when they have left their native country for Great Britain. Here is a letter from an ex-constable in Hertfordshire—
I have got a nice house here, and in a short time, when I get the place fixed, I hope to be very comfortable. I am very grateful to you and all your assistants for what you have done for me. Were it not for the Re-settlement Branch I am sure I should never have discovered this place:
Another letter from a constable settled in Scotland says:
I have now procured a most beautiful house. Personally, I must admit that I am highly pleased with the same and I have not the slightest hesitation in strongly recommending them to any more of our chaps who are on the look-out for accommodation. The houses are beautifully laid out and surpassed my expectations a thousandfold.
Here is a letter from Wales:
I also thank you for the kind interest you have taken in me since my arrival as by such you were instrumental in procuring a house for myself and family, the latter is arriving here this week'.'
A letter from Lincolnshire is as follows:
I am settled down here all right, and am pleased with the house. I am pleased to let you know that I have been very kindly treated since I arrived in this country. I return you my best thanks for all the trouble you have taken on my behalf.
There are a very large number of other letters stating that these officers and men have been comfortably settled, and, what is more important, that they have been most kindly treated by their neighbours in all the villages and towns where they have been settled. They come under the special charge of the British police, and all their neighbours pay tribute to these ex-Royal Irish Constabulary men when they settle in their midst. We have as our objective the settlement of these officers and men, not in the large towns, but in the villages and small towns. Most of them are agriculturists by birth, and they are more likely to be absorbed in occupations in these smaller places.
The Lords have made 13 Amendments of substance to this Bill, an additional Amendment, proposed by the Government, and a few purely consequential Amendments. Of these 13 Amendments, two are only drafting Amendments inserted with a view of removing, as far as possible, references to previous enactments, or what is generally called legislation by reference. I shall propose "That this House doth agree "with these Amendments, and as they make the Bill clearer to those particularly interested in it, I am sure that the House will agree to accept them. Other Amendments have for their purpose the removing of doubts as to the security, in every contingency, of the compensation allowances given to these men. One Amendment, which we shall accept, introduces a Secretary of State to be personally responsible for the interests of these men and to act. with the Treasury in seeing that they get everything to which they are entitled under the Act and under the terms of disbandment. I am sure that the Amendments to which I have referred will be welcomed by the men, and I feel confident that the House will accept them.
These remain seven Amendments, all of which but one raise the question of privilege. Four moved and adopted by their Lordships are outside the scope of the Bill and outside the Financial
Resolution. Therefore, it is quite impossible for the Government to accept them. In regard to these Amendments, I do not wish to base the Government objection to their acceptance solely on the ground that they offend the Rules of this House. There are substantial, and I think adequate. reasons, in addition to the Rules of the House, why they should not be accepted. Let me take the first of them. I will deal very briefly with them, because one must go into them in greater detail when their rejection is moved. The first Amendment to which we object alters the Bill as it went from this House by doing away with what is called "double payments to police. "As the Bill left this House, if the ex-Royal Irish Constabulary officer or man joined a police force, his compensation allowance was taken into consideration, having regard to the pay that he received in the new police force, or the pension that he might ultimately receive from that force. Their Lordships have struck out the Clause dealing with this important question and have made it possible, as the Bill now stands, though I must ask the House to disagree with the Lords Amendment, for a disbanded policeman to get the whole of his compensation allowance as well as his pay or pension. My chief objection to this is that it violates a sound principle in the administration of public moneys and public forces, that, where a man has been compensated for the loss of his office, he should not be paid to the full extent if he obtains a similar office during his future career. As a matter of fact, in practice, a disbanded Royal Irish Constabulary man will be able to join any police ferrie without loss or diminution of pension except
a police force, the expenses of which are defrayed in whole or part out of moneys provided by Parliament or any Parliament in Ireland or out of any funds assisted by the Exchequer or by any Exchequer in Ireland.

Sir JOHN BUTCHER: Does that enable him to join a Colonial or an Indian police force, without losing his pension or without. diminution of pension?

Sir H. GREENWOOD: Yes, if they come under these words, and I think they do. Certain of them do. They must come under the words
a police force, the expenses of which are defrayed in whole or in part out of moneys
provided by Parliament or any Parliament in Ireland or out of any funds assisted by the Exchequer or by any Exchequer in Ireland.
For instance, if he joins a force in Canada or Australia he certainly would not have compensation allowance taken into account.

Lord ROBERT CECIL: If, on the invitation of the Minister, we discuss in a general way all these topics, shall we be entitled to go into the questions when they are raised on the Amendments? It is not for me to comment on any course which the Minister may choose to pursue, but is it not rather unusual and inconvenient to raise in detail all the questions which we shall have to discuss when the particular Amendments are called?

Colonel ASHLEY: If I am fortunate enough to catch your eye before the Amendments are moved, I take it that I shall be allowed to traverse all the statements of the right hon. Gentleman?

Sir J. BUTCHER: Is it not very convenient for the Members of this House who have not followed the discussions in the House of Lords very closely to know, in general terms and without going into great detail, what we are really going to discuss to-day, and is it not a fact that all that the Chief Secretary has done up till now is merely to indicate in general terms what we shall have to consider, and will not that be of great help to us in discussing the Amendments in detail?

Mr. SPEAKER: It is usual where the Lords Amendments are at all complicated, on the Motion "The Lords Amendment. be now considered, "for the Minister in charge of the Bill to give a short, general review of the Amendments, and to state how he proposes to deal with them. I do not think we should argue the merits—he was just beginning to enter into the merits of particular Amendments—but it is convenient for the House to have a general view of what is going to be proposed by the Government.

Sir H. GREENWOOD: It is my intention to tell the House exactly how we are going to deal with these Amendments. I hope I have not trespassed on the patience of the House, but this is a most complicated business. I was assured, after consulting those best qualified to advise me, that this was the usual and best course to pursue. I had dealt with the
Amendment which raises the question of what is known as "continuance of employment in police or double payment, "and I said that we could not accept it.

Lieut.-Colonel ARCHER-SHEE: Could the right hon. Gentleman say which Amendment that was?

Sir H. GREENWOOD: The omission of Sub-sections (3) and (4) of Clause 1. Their Lordships, by the next Amendment, propose that the date of disbandment, namely, 25th January, should be put back to a date in December. I must oppose this Amendment on the simple ground that the date of disbandment must be the date on which disbandment commenced. The next Amendment which I must oppose is one to set up by Statute a tribunal to consider questions after they have been settled by a Secretary of State in conjunction with the Treasury. Their Lordships' next Amendment has the effect of embodying in the Bill the terms of disbandment. The terms of disbandment cannot be embodied in this Bill. They are temporary measures dealing with an emergency, and to lout them in the Bill would preclude me in future from giving any further advantage to disbanded Royal Irish Constabulary men if good case were shown. Another important Amendment moved by their Lordships was to include in the Bill all the pre-disbandment pensioners of the Royal Irish Constabulary, numbering between 7,000 and 8,000 men. It is not possible for me to accept this, as it is one of the Amendments which is outside both the Financial Resolution and outside the Title of the Bill. Further, pensioners cannot be considered to be in the same category of cases in Ireland as disbanded policemen. The last Amendment is one dealing with a point which I consider of prime importance—it was pressed strongly in the House of Lords, especially by Lord Carson—namely, that in a case where a policeman has been wounded in the course of his duty, and has been pensioned on a special wound pension, if that wound pension is less than the compensation allowance he would have received had he remained unwounded in the force at the date of disbandment, the wound pension shall be brought up to what his pension would have been had he not been wounded.

Rear-Admiral ADAIR: And more on account. of the wound.

Sir H. GREENWOOD: I cannot say more. That is not the Amendment. It will perhaps expedite matters if I say this. I cannot accept the date moved in by Their Lordships—lst January, 1919—because 1st April, 1919, is the pivotal date in the history of the pay and pensions of police forces in Great Britain and Ireland. But I have had a consultation with the Chancellor of the Exchequer and whilst the Government cannot accept the Amendment in this Bill, because it is outside the scope of the Bill and of the Financial Resolution and is therefore impossible for the House to go into it, my right hon. Friend will agree to an Amendment of the Royal Irish Constabulary Pensions Order, 1922, so that these particular wounded Royal Irish Constabulary who since 1st April, 1919, have been discharged from the force because of wounds with a wound pension less than they would have received had they stayed on unwounded and been disbanded, will have their pensions raised to what they would have received had they been disbanded. In meeting that case I think I meet the really substantial case which has been raised by their Lordships, and I hope the case will appeal to everyone in the House. That is a summary—all I intended to make—of the Government position in reference to these Amendments.

Colonel ASHLEY: I believe the Government have muddled their business in the way they have handled this Bill in another place. The Chief Secretary told us, at the beginning of his interesting remarks, that unfortunately, owing to a mistake, no member of the Government was on the Committee which considered this Bill in another place, and therefore, it may be inferred that their Lordships made many errors in considering the Bill and infringed the privileges of this House. Consequently we are here this afternoon with a, considerable number of Amendments to discuss, of which seven out of eight of those of substance are, I understand, to be ruled out of Order on the ground of privilege. Surely the House is entitled to complain of the somewhat remiss action of the Government. It ought not to have been beyond the power or the foresight of the Government to have seen that a member of His Majesty's Government was on that Committee, so that he could have pointed out to their
Lordships that what they were doing was a matter of privilege, that they were wasting their time, our time, the printer's time and the nations money in having these Amendments put in which are to be ruled out.
The House is entitled to some explanation as to how this muddle has occurred. Who is in charge of Irish business in another place? I do not know. Perhaps I ought to know. The Lord Chancellor very often makes impassioned speeches about Ireland. The First. Commissioner of Works often deals with Irish matters. It seems to me it is no one's business to look after Ireland in another place, and even in this House the affairs of Ireland are put into Commission and are not in any one person's hands, but in the hands of two or three people, of whom sometimes one appears and sometimes another. I really think the House of Commons might inquire somewhat more closely as to why this muddle—because I think it is a muddle—has occurred in another place, and why we have solemnly to take into consideration all these Amendments which we are told, quite rightly, no doubt, are privileged. and why the Government did not have the ordinary foresight—there has never been any foresight in regard to Ireland—to see that their Lordships were informed that they were infringing our privileges. The right hon, Baronet was very pleased with what he and his Department had done for the disbanded Royal Irish Constabulary men who had come to this country. He told us that 760 men, 87 women, and 171 children had already been provided with lodgings and he took credit to the Government for having done that. Very little credit is due to the Government for what they have done. The credit is due to my hon. and learned Friend the Member for York (Sir J. Butcher) and other hon. Members who, from the very first, made the welfare of these gallant men their special care. They asked questions, they went on deputations to the Government, and it was not until they made themselves objectionable to the Government that these things were done for these deserving men, women, and children. I am very glad they have been done, but let us have credit where credit is due. It is not due to the Government, but to hon. Members who sit below the Gangway who took up their case.

Sir J. BUTCHER: I should like to say one or two words as to the general principles on which I think we ought to approach these Amendments. First of all, I do not. think the House would desire that we should use any technical objection, even by way of privilege, in order to defeat Amendments which we think just. After all, the privilege of this House is waived, and ought to be waived, in order to meet the demands of justice, and if the Lords have, as I think they have in this case, called attention to certain defects in the Bill in the form in which it went up to them, and if those defects cannot be remedied without this House waiving its privilege. I can assure the Chief Secretary that he will find many in this House who would be willing to waive that privilege. After all, this case of the Royal Irish Constabulary, I think, is an absolutely unique case in our history. These are the men who fought gallantly for us during what was really a period of civil war during the last two years, and we now know what service they did. They preserved a large measure of order, which could not have been preserved without them, and in preserving it, many of them suffered in life and in limb and will bear on their bodies to their dying days the marks of the gallant service they did for us. Now, after that service which they have done, Parliament, in its wisdom, has said. "We must adopt a new state of things. We must help out this old force. We must leave Ireland to govern itself without the aid of the Irish Constabulary, and by reason of the services which they rendered to us and to the people. of Ireland who desired to see law and order preserved, these men have suffered bitterly in their life and in their fortune and many of them are driven out of the homes which they hope to live in for the rest of their lives. "Therefore I do not think I put forward an exaggerated claim when I say the case of the Royal Irish Constabulary is a unique case and deserves special treatment at our hands. The Chief Secretary referred to the cruelly hard case of the man who, shortly or perhaps for two months or more before disbandment, got wounded in the service of the Crown, got retired from the force on account of the injuries which they so received, and when they were so retired got actually less pension than if they had survived
uninjured and been disbanded under the Bill. Unless something is done for these men—the Chief Secretary I am glad to know is going to do something for them—they would doubly suffer by reason of having suffered in the service of the Crown. They would get a less pension than if they had not been wounded. Further than that, they would retire on whatever pension they got, it may be, crippled for life and unable to earn anything in future. I am glad to know that the case will be met by the Chief Secretary, as it cannot be met under this Bill, in concert with the. Chancellor of the Exchequer by amending the Pensions Act of 1922 and seeing that the injustice which otherwise would have been done to these men is so remedied, and I think we ought to thank them for that concession.
The only other case I should like to refer to is that of the men who were pensioned before the time of disbandment, and were driven out of their homes at the point of the rifle by reason of the fact that they had served in the Royal Irish Constabulary. As matters now stand, these men have no legal rights whatever to a farthing of compensation in any shape or form for having been so driven out, and I contrast their case with the case of the men who are disbanded under this Bill, who have also been driven out of their homes, but get certain concessions in the way of disturbance allowance, separation allowance, and free travelling warrants, which these old pensioners do not get. Is there any conceivable reason why a man disbanded under this Bill and driven. out of his home in Ireland, and forced to come as a refugee to England, should get certain advantages, while men who were pensioned before the disbandment, who suffered precisely the same hardships, were driven out and forced to he refugees, should not get similar benefits to those conferred under this Bill? I hope when we discuss the matter in detail the Chief Secretary will explain that, because one of the Amendments seeks to put the old pensioners driven from their homes on the same footing as regards these allowances as the men who were disbanded under this Bill. I think everyone who knows the material facts, even in a remote degree, must feel this to be a case in which our honour is concerned, and in which we, as Members of the Legislature, should do
all in our power to remedy the terrible hardships under which these men suffer, and see that they spend the remainder of their days, whether in this country or in Ireland, or in one of our distant Colonies, assured that British justice has done all it can do to remedy their hardships.

Rear-Admiral ADAIR: It is true that the Chief Secretary has done a great deal for these men, but there have been great delays in settling the awards and pensions and the disturbance allowances. Who is responsible for these delays, and are there any awards yet to be determined and settled?

Lord R. CECIL: The Chief Secretary to some extent, and my hon. and gallant Friends opposite seem to consider that we are precluded from accepting these Amendments by reason of the doctrine of privilege or other technical difficulties. That is not so. This House constantly waives its privilege every Session where it thinks it desirable to do so. Nor can I believe, unless Mr. Speaker says I am wrong, that the fact that certain Amendments were beyond the scope of the Bill as it left this House, but not beyond the scope of the Bill as altered by the House of Lords, preclude us from dealing with and accepting those Amendments if so desired. I have not the knowledge as to the details of these cases that is possessed by other hon. Members, but I know that the great majority of the House is strongly in favour of dealing generously with these men, not because they have been through greater hardships or have performed greater service to the country than many of those who fought in the War, and who are not receiving as generous treatment as these men, but because the British Government, for reasons of its own, into which I am not entitled to enter now, has deliberately—I do not want to use provocative words—abandoned its responsibility with respect to these men. That gives them quite a special claim beyond and in addition to that possessed by anyone who has suffered in the service of the Crown. Therefore, as far as I am concerned, I should not be in favour of insisting on any technical difficulties or technical objections which there may be to the Lords Amendments, and I trust that the House will consider each Amendment on its merits.

Mr. A. SHORT: I gathered from the statement of the right hon. Gentleman that he did not propose to accept the new Clause C—(Pension of officer or constable retired since let January, 1919, through unfitness caused by injury.)
Any officer or constable of the force, who since the first day of January, nineteen hundred and nineteen, has been retired by reason of unfitness caused by injury inflicted in the course of his duty, shall be entitled, if still living, to the same pension as he would have been awarded if he had continued to serve up to the date of disbandment under this Act.
I understood that what he proposes to do is to amend the Pension Orders in such a way as to enable any one of these constables who was injured after the 1st April, to have his pension improved to the extent indicated in the new Clause. It appears from that, that some constables who suffered from wounds prior to 1st April, 1919, will not receive the benefit which he proposes to secure for them. If it is right and just, as I think it is, that these pensions should be increased to the extent of the pension that they would have received on disbandment from the service, there is no good reason why those who retired because of wounds prior to 1st April should not come within the provisions of the Amendment that he proposes to make in the Pensions Order. Will the right hon. Gentleman consider this question, and lay before us some facts as to the number of men who will be involved and who will suffer if the date is taken from 1st April rather than from 1st January, 1919.

Question, "That the Lords Amendments be. now considered, "put, and agreed to.

Lords Amendments considered accordingly.

TITLE

An Act to make provision for the disbandment of the Royal Irish Constabulary and with respect to magistrates appointed under the Acts relating to that force, and for the validation of things done or omitted in the execution or purported execution of those Acts, and for other purposes incidental thereto.

Lords Amendment:

After the word "of"["disbandment of the Royal Irish Constabulary"], insert, "and for other matters relating to."

Mr. SPEAKER: It will be necessary to move to postpone this Amendment.

Question, "That the Lords Amendment be postponed," put, and agreed to—[Sir H. Greenwood.]

CLAUSE 1—(Disbandment of the Royal Irish Constabulary.)

(1) The Royal Irish Constabulary shall be disbanded on such day not being later than the thirty-first day of July nineteen hundred and twenty-two, as may be fixed by the Lord Lieutenant, and on or before that date every officer and constable of that force shall retire from the force as and when required by the Lord Lieutenant, and shall on his retirement be entitled to receive such compensation as may be awarded to him by the Treasury in accordance with the rules contained in the Ninth Schedule to the Government of Ireland Act, 1920, as amended and modified by the provisions set out in the Schedule to this Act and, in the event of his dying after a compensation allowance has been awarded to him, the Treasury shall grant a pension or gratuities to his widow and children in accordance with the said rules as so amended and modified.

(2) The provisions of Article 15 (which relates to assignment and Regulations as to payment of pensions, etc.), and Article 16 (which relates to forfeiture of pension or allowance) of the Royal Irish Constabulary Pensions Order, 1922, shall apply as respects compensation allowances awarded in pursuance of this Section in like manner as they apply as respects pensions under that Order, with the substitution of references to the Treasury for references to the Inspector-General.

(3) If any officer or constable to whom a compensation allowance has been awarded in pursuance of this Section takes service in any police force the allowance may be suspended in whole or in part so long as he remains in such force.

(4) Sections eight and ten of the Police Pensions Act, 1921, shall not apply to the service in the Royal Irish Constabulary of any officer or constable to whom a compensation allowance has been awarded in pursuance of this Section, or to his prior service in any other police force so far as the same has, for the purposes of the award, been reckoned as service in the Royal Irish Constabulary, but if any such officer or constable takes service in any police force, and on his ultimate retirement therefrom is awarded a pension, then, if the amount of the compensation allowance when added to the amount of his pension exceeds the higher of the two following sums,

(a) two-thirds of the salary on which his compensation allowance was calculated; Or
(b) two-thirds of the salary of which he was in receipt at the time of his ultimate retirement;
or should those sums be equal, exceeds either of those sums, his compensation allowance may be suspended to the extent of the excess:

Provided that where the officer or constable on his ultimate retirement is awarded a lump sum instead of or in addition to a pension, the annual amount which would represent that sum, if converted into a life annuity, shall be determined by the Treasury, and the amount so determined shall, for the purpose of the foregoing provision, be deemed to be or to form part of his pension.

(7)Where, for the purpose of expediting the disbandment of the Royal Irish Constabulary, any member of that force has, since the twenty-fifth day of January, nineteen hundred and twenty-two, and before the passing of this Act, been discharged with compensation, his discharge and the grant of compensation to him shall be as valid and effectual as if they had been expressly authorised by this Act, and the compensation shall be treated as compensation payable under this Act, and the provisions of this Act with respect to a compensation allowance awarded in pursuance of this Section shall apply to any annual allowance so granted.

(9)The powers of the Lord Lieutenant or Inspector-General with respect to pensions, allowances, or gratuities of members of the Royal Irish Constabulary, their widows, children, or dependents, under the Acts or Orders relating to that force may. after the day fixed for the disbandment of the said force, be exercised by the Treasury.

Lords Amendment:

In Sub-section (1),leave out "July" and insert "August."

Sir H. GREENWOOD: I beg to move, "That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said Amendment."
This Amendment is necessary for obvious reasons owing to delay in disbandment of the Royal Irish Constabulary.

Colonel ASHLEY: Is the right hon. Gentleman sure that the 31st August is late enough? Does he expect to have completed the disbandment by then?

Sir H. GREENWOOD: That is what I hope.

Mr. SPEAKER: This Amendment raises the question of privilege. It will extend for a month the period during which these men will have to be paid. Does the right hon. Gentleman move to agree with the Amendment?

Sir H. GREENWOOD: Yes, Sir.

Lieut. - Commander KENWORTHY: Can the right hon. Gentleman explain
to us what he means by delay? I take it that it means extra cost. I do not think the delay in the disbandment of the Royal Irish Constabulary is a matter that can he waived aside in this manner. What is the cause of the delay? Have the Government wobbled again in their policy? This is a matter of some substance. Have you a handful of men you are keeping on for military or police reasons, or has there been some muddle about the accounts? I received a letter this morning from a member of the Royal Irish Constabulary saying that he expected to be home within a week, and that he was the last. He was a barrack master. That does not bear out the statement about delay in disbanding the remaining members of this famous force.

Sir H. GREENWOOD: The men of the Royal Irish Constabulary who now remain in Ireland are men required to guard valuable stores. While the Provisional Government needs the whole of its forces in keeping down rebellion in different parts of Ireland, it is not possible for us immediately to disband all these men. It makes for the security of the property of the Crown and for peace that these men should guard certain places in Ireland.

Lieut. - Colonel ARCHER - SHEE: I thought this was a matter about which we were all agreed, but I can see that there may be further difficulties. Supposing these stores are still left in Ireland, does the right hon. Gentleman think that the end of August will be a late enough date? Why should he not put in a later date?

Sir H. GREENWOOD: I am of opinion that by the end of this month we shall be able to disband them all but, of course, even if they are disbanded, steps will have to be taken, in any event, to protect the stores, if they need protection, subsequent to the end of August. I am justified in putting in this date. The members of the Royal Irish Constabulary still left in Ireland wish to be disbanded at the earliest possible date, and their wishes ought to be considered.

Sir J. REMNANT: That may not be on the 31st August.

Question put, and agreed to.

Lords Amendment:

In Sub-section (1), leave out
the Ninth Schedule to fie Government of Ireland Act, 1920, as amended and modified by the provisions set out in the—
and insert "Part I of the First."

Sir H. GREENWOOD: I beg to move "That this House dab agree with the Lords in the said Amendment."
This is the first of a series of drafting Amendments which their Lordships consider necessary, and I propose to accept their Amendments, in order to avoid what is called legislation by reference. The original Bill, when it went to the House of Lords, contained many references to previous Acts of Parliament. Their Lordships thought that this might confuse those interested. namely, the policemen themselves. Therefore, instead of referring to the Schedule of the Act of 1920 and the modification thereof, we are including the Schedule in the Bill.

Lord R. CECIL: There is no alteration?

Sir H. GREENWOOD: The alteration does not affect the substance of the Bill.

Question put, and agreed to. Lords Amendment:

In Sub-section (1),leave out "as so amended and modified, and insert
Provided that in awarding any such compensation, allowance, pension or gratuity, no deduction shall be made by reason of the fact that any compensation has been awarded to the officer or constable in respect of injuries sustained in the discharge of his duties.

Sir H. GREENWOOD: I beg to move, That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said Amendment."
This is an Amendment to avoid the, risk—I did not think there was any risk, but I am prepared to meet their Lordships' views, and to avoid any possible risk—of payments being made which take into consideration the compensation for malicious injuries awarded to a disbanded man. Their Lordships want to make it impossible that such malicious injury award received by a constable or officer of the force, who is disbanded, should be taken into consideration in the assessment of pension.

Mr. SPEAKER: This Amendment is technically a privileged one, but I understand that it does not alter the practice.

Sir J. BUTCHER: I understand that, in assessing either the pension of the man or the gratuity allowance to the widow, no account is to be taken of any compensation for malicious injuries which the man has received.

Sir H. GREENWOOD: May I read the Proviso? It is very important that this matter should be clearly understood—
Provided that in awarding any such compensation, allowance, pension or gratuity, no deduction shall be made by reason of the fact that any compensation has been awarded to the officer or constable in respect of injuries sustained in the discharge of his duties.
That is perfectly clear.

Sir W. DAVISON: In the Amendment of the Pensions Order, to which the right hon. Gentleman referred, it should be made clear that the man who was wounded some months ago, and before the time came when the force was disbanded, will receive the entire compensation which he has been awarded for his wound, in addition to the disbandment allowance, which is now being paid to the man who was not wounded.

Question put, and agreed to. Lords Amendment:

In Sub-section (2), leave out
of Article 15 (which relates to assignment and regulation as to payment of pensions, etc.) and Article 16 (which relates to forfeiture of pensions or allowance) of the Royal Irish Constabulary Pensions Order, 1922,
and insert
contained in Part II of the First Schedule to this Act.

Agreed to.

Lords Amendment:

In Sub-section (2), leave out "that Order, "and insert" the Royal Irish Constabulary Pensions Order, 1922."

Agreed to.

Lords Amendment:

In Sub-section (2), leave out the words "the Treasury," and insert "a Secretary of State."

Sir H. GREENWOOD: I beg to move, "That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said Amendment."
As the Bill left thin House, the Treasury was to take the place of the Inspector-General, who, prior to disbandment, was the proper custodian of the well-being of the police, and was responsible for administration of pensions. As all officers of
the police force, including the Inspector-General, are being disbanded, some other authority must be put in his place. Their Lordships suggested that, instead of the Treasury, there should be a Secretary of State. I have no objection. It makes a Secretary of State, in all probability the Colonial Secretary, responsible for the administration of pensions and compensation allowance.

Lord R. CECIL: I would like a little more explanation on this point. I should have thought it a rather odd thing to substitute a Secretary of State for the Treasury in dealing with strictly financial matters. This is a matter dealing with pensions, to be awarded to disbanded members of the Royal Irish Constabulary. I should have thought that that was a matter which, strictly speaking, was within the purview of the Treasury, and that there might be some inconvenience, not only constitutionally, but to the men themselves, by putting in a Secretary of State, because you would not be able to exclude the Treasury. The Treasury would come in sooner or later to control the financial aspect. I should be glad to know what is the skilled advice of the Government? I am a little afraid that the result will be that a man will have to go to two Departments instead of one. If that is so, I should have thought that the Bill was better in its original form, both in the matter of constitutional propriety and still more from the point of view of simplicity in carrying out its provisions.

Sir H. GREENWOOD: This is a matter of administration only. It concerns the Schedule. As the Bill left this House, the Treasury was the authority, but their Lordships considered the Treasury to be unsympathetic towards the administration of this portion of the Bill. Though I agree with the Noble Lord that the Treasury is bound to come in whenever questions of this kind are involved, yet the desire of the Government was to meet their Lordships in this, and, as further down in the Bill, he will find that a Secretary of State has still wider powers in reference to considering this question, we thought it better to accept the Amendment, especially having regard to the fact that a Secretary of State will, in future, be responsible for a great many of the questions arising in connection with Ireland.

Question put, and agreed to.

Lords Amendment:

Leave out Sub-section (3).

Mr. SPEAKER: This is a privileged Amendment.

Sir H. GREENWOOD: I beg to move, That this House doth disagree with the Lords in the said Amendment."
This is an Amendment which is not only privileged, but is outside the scope of the Financial Resolution. But even if it were not, one would oppose it on the merits. It is a question of the compensation to disbanded police who join another police force. As a matter of practice it refers only to any police force, the expenses of which are defrayed in whole or in part out of money provided by Parliament in this country or by a Parliament in Ireland. The principle of the thing is this, and it is one that permeates the whole administration in this country in reference to persons who have been disbanded and are paid compensation out of public funds. The disbanded policeman receives the addition of 12 years' service for the purpose of compensation, and he gets a very much increased compensation allowance by reason of that 12 years' addition. The principle applied by the Government in this Bill is that, if that man re-engages, say, in the London Police Force, he shall not get the whole of his compensation allowance, and also the whole of the pay paid by the London Police Force, which is supported very largely out of public funds by a Vote of this House. I think that the principle is a sound one, that the same authority should not pay the same man twice over. But we had provided that the Royal Irish Constabulary man shall not suffer.
I will give a case in point to make that quite clear. A Royal Irish Constabulary man is disbanded with his 12 years added, and we presume that he gets £4 a week at the time of his disbandment as a constable, £3 10s. is the pay which he will receive if he joins the London Police Force. His own compensation allowance would abate, so that he would not take the total of his allowance, but if he lost his employment, his compensation allowance would at once revive. This system has already been put. into operation in reference to the Royal Ulster Constabulary. 1,200 of the
men, who were disbanded one day from the Royal Irish Constabulary, became members of the Royal, Ulster Constabulary the next day. We consider that it would not be fair, either to Northern Ireland or to Great Britain, that the taxpayers should pay both the compensation allowance for disbandment in Ireland and also the full pay of a policeman if he seeks employment in that capacity. I think that the principle is perfectly sound. We say, further, that the same principle also applies to pensions. The man is incomparably better off in another way. If a man was a sergeant at the Royal Irish Constabulary, and, on disbandment, gets £5 a week, and joins as a constable in London at £3 10s., we can take out of his compensation allowance 30s. a week, so that his pay in the new force will never be less than it was in the force which has been disbanded.

Mr. HANNON: Suppose he joins no force?

Sir H. GREENWOOD: Then he will get his compensation allowance, payable in full.

Mr. HANNON: You encourage the man to remain out of any forge.

Sir H. GREENWOOD: By no means. The fact is that it works so well in practice that I do not know of any complaints that have come from Ulster or elsewhere-. This is a matter which the Government must stand. I was very glad to be able to get the consent of the Treasury to restricting the operation of this principle to the case of those police forces in Great Britain or Ireland, paid in whole or in part out of the public funds, so that, if a man joins a force in Canada or Australia, he will not be affected. I ask the House to support me in this. It is impossible to give way on this Amendment, which is outside the Financial Resolution altogether.

5.0 p.m.

Lieut.-Colonel GUINNESS: In view of your decision, Mr. Speaker, that this Amendment is outside the scope of the Bill, and the Financial Resolution, I am afraid that we have not much prospect of getting it accepted as it stands. I think that this is a great pity, because it is against public interest to discourage these pensioners from doing useful work. If people are better off by doing no work
for the state than by doing it, obviously very large body of competent men will be shut out from being employed to the advantage both of themselves and of the State. The right hon. Gentleman has spoken of his restricting the operation of disqualification to the cases of men who join a police force which is paid in whole or in part by this Parliament or by the Irish Parliament. I am glad to hear that he has got the consent of the Treasury to that concession, but, by disagreeing with this Amendment, we do not get to that position. We simply put the Bill back to the position which existed when it left this House, and there is no proviso limiting this disqualification to those police forces which are paid either by the British or the Irish Parliament. Therefore, I suggest to the Chief Secretary that instead of putting the Bill back as it was, he should. send to the Lords an alternative. I have handed in a form of words which was brought up in the House of Lords as a. result of the proceedings of the Select Committee on this Bill. The suggestion is that at the end of this Subsection we add the words:
This Sub-section applies to any police force the expenses of which are defrayed in whole or in part out of moneys provided by Parliament, or by any Parliament in Ireland, or out of funds assisted by the Exchequer or by the, Exchequer in Ireland.
To accept such a suggestion would be to carry out the intention which the right hon. Gentleman has mentioned. If a man engages in a Colonial or Dominion police force, there is nothing in the argument that he should forfeit his pension. If the Government choose to say that a man is being paid for more than his full time, I am afraid that one is not strong enough to upset the Government's decision. But there is certainly no case for extending that principle to a Colonial or Dominion police force any more than to a roan who goes into private employment. It has nothing to do with this House or with the Irish Parliament. I understand that this compromise was not objected to by the Government in the House of Lords, and that it had every appearance of having been accepted. I would like to move the form of words I have read out as an alternative. If it be not in order for me to do that, I would beg the Chief Secretary to move the Amendment in that form himself.

Colonel ASHLEY: I oppose the right hon. Gentleman on a matter of principle. I can quite understand the Government saying to a Royal Irish Constabulary man, or to a soldier or sailor or airman who had a disability pension given him by the State for injuries received in the public service, "If you re-enlist in some other police force or take up some other form of public service, we cannot go on paying you full salary in your new employment as well as your disability pension. "That is only fair. After all, a disability pension is given because it is assumed that the man is unable, through having been injured in the service of the State, to earn full wages. But here we have quite young men, who have served the State and undertaken to serve the State for a certain number of years. This House, for a reason which seemed good to it, decided to tear up the bargain with these men, and to say, "We will no longer keep you in our service for 10 or 12 years, or whatever the period may be; we will, at a month's or two months' notice, get rid of you. "Then the Government have agreed to give the men certain compensation, which is quite liberal, in order to make up for their loss of prospects. When the men have been disbanded and the money has been paid, I hold that the transaction is closed, both on the part of the State and on the part of the individual, and that the man is in the position of a citizen who has a private income. To say that that man, who is presumably able-bodied, because he is anxious to serve the State again rather than to live a. life of idleness, shall have his money taken away from him by the State, is unjustifiable. It is an extremely mean and almost a dishonest procedure on the part of the State.
If it he unfair and wrong to go on paying these pensions to these men if they enlist in the Metropolitan Police, surely, on the ground of equity, it is equally unfair and wrong for the British taxpayer to pay the pensions if the men go into the Canadian or Australian police? There is no difference in equity, whether we are finding the money, or Australia or Canada or Tim-buctoo is finding it. The only possible ground on which the right Gentleman can resist the Lords Amendment, is the fact that we have compensated these men generously, that we cannot afford any more if they re-enlist, and that the taxpayer has not the money. I do not agree
with that view. On the ground of justice the Government have not a leg to stand an, and I hope the House will go to a Division on the Amendment.

Mr. HANNON: I strongly support the contention of the last speaker. When the Irish policeman, on disbandment, agreed with the State to accept certain compensation, the transaction was complete. It is almost shame-faced impertinence on the part of the Government to say that if a man is received into another police force he must forego the compensation which, in virtue of his service to the State in Ireland, he received as a bargain. This is a new interpretation of the relationship between the State and its servant. I have deliberately refrained hitherto from saying anything on Irish questions in this House, but I cannot allow this opportunity to pass without saying that, of all the public servants who have served the Crown, none deserves more sympathy and consideration than the Royal Irish Constabulary man. It is monstrous on the part of the Chief Secretary to ask the House to pay no attention to a bargain completed by the Government between itself and its servants in Ireland—a bargain with men who have undergone risks and treatment the like of which no servant of the Crown has undergone. This bargain has been completed, and the Chief Secretary says it is not to hold good if the man obtains employment in another police force in this country or in either of the police forces in Ireland. I can be no party, and I hope the House will be no party, to the violation of a bargain of that character. You cannot make bargains with public servants and then come to the House and break them into fragments at the suggestion of a Minister of the Crown. This proposal is putting a premium on unemployment. Let us vindicate our obligations to these splendid public servants in Ireland by doing them justice in this House.

Sir H. GREENWOOD: There is obviously some misunderstanding. There is nothing new in this principle. It is well-established. It applies to al' Civil Service pensions under the Superannuation Act. It applies to all police pensions in Great Britain under the Police Pensions Act, and it has applied to Irish Constabulary Pensions since 1883. The State
should not pay twice. You compensate a man for loss of employment as a policeman. He secures re-employment as a policeman.

Mr. HANNON: You are forgetting the exceptional circumstances under which he was compensated.

Sir H. GREENWOOD: That is taken into consideration by adding 12 years to his pension rights. I agree that the man deserves it all. We have disbanded him with the largest compensation allowance which has been given by this House or by any other House, and because he has lost his vocation as a policeman. It is for that that the disbandment payment is made. If the man follows the same vocation in a police force in Northern or Southern Ireland or in Great Britain, we say that he should not draw both the compensation allowance for loss of his office and also the full pay for work in the same calling. It is a principle that goes back more than a generation, and it is a sound principle. It is accepted by the men themselves. There must be now, in police forces supported out of the funds which I have indicated, something like 1,500 or 1,600 ex-Royal Irish Constabulary men who, as far as I know, have never complained of the terms which we have laid down, for they are continuing in their calling as policemen and their compensation allowance is in part in abeyance. As soon as they cease their present calling as policemen they are in an incomparably better position than those who have not the compensation allowance. The hon. and gallant Member for Bury St. Edmunds (Limit.- Colonel Guinness) has suggested that we should accept an Amendment which was put into the Bill by their Lordships to the following effect:
This Sub-section applies to any police force the expenses of which are defrayed in whole or in part out of moneys provided by Parliament or by any Parliament in Ireland or out of funds assisted by the Exchequer or by any Exchequer in Ireland.
I am quite prepared to accept that suggestion, and to put into the Statute words to the effect that that was the practice. But I think the procedure of the House must be, first, to reject the Amendment of the Lords, and then to move the Amendment I have read.

Mr. SPEAKER: if that be what the House wish, the procedure would be to
disagree with the Lords Amendment, and, in lieu thereof, to move, as an Amendment to the Bill, to insert the words mentioned, at the end of Sub-section (3) as it stood when the Bill left this House.

Sir J. BUTCHER: I hope that the House will insist on the Lords Amendment. An objection has been raised by the Chief Secretary that it is outside the scope of the Financial Resolution.

Sir H. GREENWOOD: Let me correct that statement. If I led the House to believe that that was so, I was wrong. It is not outside the scope of the Financial Resolution.

Sir J. BUTCHER: That clears away one great difficulty. If it were outside the scope of the Resolution, the House could not waive that objection, although it could waive the question of privilege. There is no difficulty before the House in adopting the Lords Amendment. All we have to do is to waive the question of privilege, and on the merits that is what we ought to do. We are compulsorily retiring a number of men from the occupation in which they looked forward to spending the rest of their lives, and we are giving them a certain compensation, but we go on to say to them, "Whatever walk of life you go into afterwards; whatever employment you take up you may keep that compensation, but if you do the one thing for which you are fitted, if you engage in the one occupation for which you have been trained, then you will suffer in your compensation." We say to these men, "You may become prison warders or go into private employment or do anything in the world for which you have no training, but if you do the one thing for which you have been trained you will suffer in your pocket." There is neither justice nor reason in that. The Chief Secretary says, this is the usual rule in the Civil Service; but there is no analogy whatever between the case of these men and the case of ordinary civil servants. In the case of the Civil Service a man is not turned out of his occupation, but is pensioned off in the ordinary course, and in such circumstances there are certain limitations upon the money which he can otherwise earn in the public service. This, however, is an entirely different, and an exceptional case. In this case, the man is not pensioned
because he has completed the term of his office, but is turned out of his occupation and is told to go into the world and seek for whatever employment he can get. Consequently the analogy of the civil servant who receives a pension in the ordinary way, has no bearing upon the question whatever. As the hon. and gallant Member for Fylde (Colonel Ashley) has pointed out, this is a simple question. A bargain has been made to give these men compensation, and by Subsection (3) the Government is trying to cut down that compensation and to alter that bargain. I hope the House will adopt the Lords Amendment which seems to be reasonable, logical and just.

Lieut.-Colonel ARCHER-SHEE: I wish to add a few words in support of the view which has been urged by several previous speakers. It is quite true, as the Chief Secretary says, that this rule prevails under the Superannuation Act. It exists in regard to police pensions, and even in regard to the Royal Irish Constabulary pensions, since 1883. Because it is an old rule, however, it does not follow that it must be a very sensible or very sound rule. As has been pointed out, a man may take up any other kind of employment and may draw both his pension and his emoluments from that employment, and to specially preclude these men from the duty for which they are particularly fitted, such as that of serving in the police force in any town or district, and to put obstacles in the way of joining such forces, seems to be extremely shortsighted. Let me remind the Chief Secretary that there are precedents for an entirely different procedure. For instance, during the War, this country paid the pensions of Army officers, while, at the same time, giving those officers the pay of their rank during their period of temporary service. There are many other precedents against the action which the Chief Secretary proposes to adopt in this case. The case of these men differs entirely from the ordinary cases, and it differs even more than the hon. Member for York (Sir J. Butcher) has indicated. Many of these men have been disbanded at a very early age. They are not like civil servants retiring at the age of 60, having earned their pensions, who probably would not be of much value in their old age if they did join up again. These are young men who have got small pensions. They are the very men whom we
would like to have, if not in an Irish Constabulary, in some other constabulary. They are just the very men that we require for such a purpose, yet they are to be deterred by being told that if they do join a police force they will suffer financially during the time they are serving in that force. The right hon. Gentleman the, Chief Secretary should give way to the evident feeling of the House in this matter and accept the Lords Amendment.

Mr. GIDEON MURRAY: Is it the case that where officers of the Civil Service are retired compulsorily the rule described by the Chief Secretary operates? Does it operate in those cases as well as in others?

Sir H. GREENWOOD: I will see that the hon. Member gets an answer to that question, but I cannot reply off-hand.

Mr. G. MURRAY: That is the whole point. The right hon. Gentleman says that this Sub-section applies in the case of all civil servants. I do not believe it would apply under the Superannuation Act to the case of civil servants retired compulsorily. Before we come to a conclusion on the matter, that point ought to be settled, but apart from that, I agree with hon. Members who have emphasised that the ease of these men is quite a special case. Various reasons have been given to show why it is a special case. I should like, to supplement those reasons by drawing the attention of the House to the fact that not only have these men lost their employment, but in many cases they have had to leave the country in which they have been brought up and in which they have lived all their lives up to now, in order to seek employment elsewhere. That is another very strong reason why the House should not agree to disagree with their Lordships' Amendment, but should, on the contrary, insist upon their Lordships' Amendment being adopted.

Mr. A. SHORT: I feel I must add my plea to those of other hon. Members who are appealing to the Chief Secretary to accept this Amendment. The Members of this force joined it under terms and conditions which were well defined and clearly known and which constituted a contract between them and His Majesty's Government. To suit the exigencies of
His Majesty's Government and to comply with the policy of His Majesty's Government, supported by this House, their service has come to an end automatically by the disbandment of the force. The contract which they entered into has been destroyed and His Majesty's Government has in some measure compensated them by making certain payments to them. That is only right and just, but having regard to the services they have rendered to the country and the Government, we should bear in mind that, in consequence of those services, they will be handicapped in their efforts to secure employment. Many avenues of employment are already closed to them because of their service in this force: but His Majesty's Government put forward the claim that we ourselves ought to be a party to the closing of one of the principal avenues through which they might reasonably be expected to find the most suitable employment. That strikes me as one of the most foolish and most monstrous proposals ever put from the Government benches. I hope the House will maintain its desire not merely to appreciate the services of these men, but to express that appreciation in a tangible form and that if necessary a Division will be taken and the Government defeated upon this question if they insist on their point of view.

Colonel Sir C. YATE: I wish to support the view put forward by the hon. Member who has just spoken. It appears to me that a pension once earned should not be touched by the Government or anybody else, and that a man who has once earned his pension should not be bound by any conditions whatever as to any future employment he may be able to secure.

Mr. BETTERTON: I should not have intervened in this Debate were it not for the fact that I have formed a very firm conclusion that the Chief Secretary has entirely failed to answer the point made against him. The analogy which he draws between the case we are considering now and the case of the ordinary civil servant retiring at the end of his time, is wholly illusory. The hon. Member for Wednesbury (Mr. A. Short.) described the true position. These compensation allowances are really in the nature of damages for breach of contract. These men entered into a contract with the Government under which, if they served a certain time, they
would receive pensions. As the hon. Member quite rightly pointed out, in order to suit our own convenience and for our owe purposes, that contract was broken, and in lieu of the pensions to which they would have been entitled, they are now getting a lump sum by way of compensation. We, however, propose to say to these men, "Because we give you this compensation you shall be precluded, except at your own cost, from taking up the work for which you have been specially trained and for which you are best suited." That seems a preposterous attitude, and I am bound to support those hon. Members who insist upon the Lords Amendment if the matter goes to a Division.

Mr. MACQUISTEN: I entirely concur with the sentiments expressed by the hon. Member who spoke last. I never heard of anything quite so hare-brained as the idea of saying to one of these men, "You have been a policeman all your life, but if you ever become one again we will take a lot of money from you." That is almost incredible, but it goes to show that, after all, the other place is not so obsolete minded as this place, when this place ever agreed to such a suggestion. Why, the very thing we ought to say to these men is, "Go and be policemen." I understand we have already sent a lot of them out to the new Ulster we are making in Palestine. We have sent a number of the Black and Tans out there. It would have been better if the Government, at the beginning, had turned to the Royal Irish Constabulary and said, "We will give you similar positions all over the world," and had offered them equal employment for which they were competent, instead of turning them out on to the streets, where they were liable to be shot, and telling them to look for employment themselves. Now the Government say that if these men find the job for which they are fitted, they will be deprived of a certain amount of compensation. I do not think there ever was quite so silly a proposal. It is a curious thing that when Governments touch the Irish question, they all seem to get into the realm of topsy-turveydom, and I think that this is the most complete example of topsy-turveydom that has ever been provided by any Government. It would be insanity to insist on this preposterous proposal. It cannot be tolerated. I do
not care how loyal a Member may be to the Government, we cannot support such a proposition. The Government is getting out of its compensation in reference to Ireland very lightly, for, after all, we have reversed the policy of 100 years, and—

Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKER (Mr. James Hope): This seems a little wide of the Amendment.

Mr. MACQUISTEN: If they are going to get off with only this little bit of compensation to the unfortunate men who believed in the continuity of British Government, and that they would never desert their friends, I think they are getting off very lightly, and that they ought to do the utmost they can for these poor, shamefaced men, who must feel, every time they go out and see what is taking place in the South of Ireland, that their lifework is being destroyed. The least they can do is to be very generous to these men. It is one of the shabbiest things that has ever been suggested, that these men, having once been policemen, should try and find something in the same line to do. I think it must be a sickening job, after the experience they have had, and I appeal to the Chief Secretary to think a little coherently in this matter.

Sir H. GREENWOOD: Let me deal with the question raised by the hon. Member for St. Rollox (Mr. G. Murray), as to whether civil servants who are retired compulsorily are liable to have their pensions abated if they secure other public employment. I am informed that the answer is "Yes, they are liable to have, their pensions abated." The hon. Member for Wednesbury (Mr. Short) talked about compensation allowances being a lump sum down, but I am sure he did not mean that, because the compensation allowance is an annuity based on the highest scale ever granted by this House, and when the hon. Member for Spring-burn (Mr. Macquisten) talks about a little bit of compensation, he really does not give the Government and himself credit in supporting the Government in this matter.

Mr. MACQUISTEN: I did not vote for the Irish Treaty, and I am glad I did not.

Sir H. GREENWOOD: Let us stick to the Bill before the House. The little bit of compensation starts with an annuity
or compensation allowance, as it is called to distinguish it from a pension, of £46 16s. a year for the last joined constable, whose service may be anything up to six months, and who is, as a rule, a young man of 19 to 25 years of age. There has never been a compensation allowance granted to so young an official of the Government of any country on such a generous scale as that. More than that, he can double that for two years from the date of his disbandment, and have a lesser pension for the years following. It is not quite, therefore, in accordance with the facts to deal with these compensation allowances as if they were not the most generous ever granted by this House to any of its public servants.

Sir J. REMNANT: So they ought to be.

Sir H. GREENWOOD: We are all agreed on that.

Sir J. REMNANT: You are now.

Sir H. GREENWOOD: The House has not followed this as closely as I have. There is not a question dealing with the treatment of the Royal Irish Constabulary as to generosity that has not been heartily supported by the Government. Now I come to the Amendment before the House. Here is a principle established by the Government and working for many years, namely, that when a man is retired compulsorily, as these Irish policeman have been, he gets an annuity from the State to compensate him for loss of office as a policeman. If he secures employment as a policeman, the loss of office element to that extent disappears. Let us take a practical case. We have had a reference to the Royal Ulster Constabulary. The Prime Minister of Northern Ireland recruited the Royal Ulster Constabulary to the extent of some 1,200 from disbanded members of the Royal Irish Constabulary, and the question to be faced at once was this, whether they could get compensation for their loss of office as Royal Irish Constabulary men, and full pay the next day as Royal Ulster Constabulary men carrying on under exactly the same conditions. It was a very serious practical question, and it was considered that the old principle governing these matters must prevail, and that these policemen could not draw this double pay from the same source. They would not
be in a worse position— in many cases they would be in a better position—than the comrades with whom they were serving, who had not previously been members of the Royal Irish Constabulary.

Colonel ASHLEY: Why should they not draw it if they get it from the same source, when they are allowed to do so if they get it from a different source? So far as justice is concerned, I can see no difference in the two cases.

Sir H. GREENWOOD: If this House compensates a man for loss of his office, and he secures a similar office next day, he should not get both compensation for loss of office and the rate of pay that goes with the office that he has not lost but only changed. I am giving the House the principle underlying the payment of retired public servants, whether they be Irish policemen, civil servants, or whoever they may be.

Sir J. BUTCHER: The circumstances are very different here.

Sir H. GREENWOOD: Certainly, the circumstances here are very different, and that is why the compensation allowance is the largest ever granted by this House.

Mr. MACQUISTEN: In those circumstances where the Government has found a man in North Ireland a job at once, I suppose you give him no compensation because he has got an equivalent job, but you compensate him where a man is put out and has to look for a job himself, and does not the right hon. Gentleman see that he is putting a premium on a man not finding a job?

Sir H. GREENWOOD: I have done my best to show the House the grounds on which the Government must resist this Amendment of the Lords. One's natural sympathy would be to do, not only what is generous with these men, but more than generous, but in this case I think hon. Members are pressing the Government too hard. I do not think it is unfair to a policeman to say that, as he has been compensated by adding 12 years to his pension rights, and as he secures compensation for loss of office, if he secures a similar office paid by the taxpayers of this country or of Ireland, his compensation allowance for loss of office should be to some extent abated. I regret that the House is not in agreement with me on this point.

Sir J. REMNANT: What happens in the case of a man going abroad on leaving the Royal Irish Constabulary? If he comes home and then joins a police force, is a claim made against him for any part of the compensation already paid him?

Sir H. GREENWOOD: Such a case has not yet arisen.

Sir J. REMNANT: But it will.

Sir H. GREENWOOD: I am not so sure. I made it clear that if a man joined a force like the Canadian, or Australian, or South African Police Forces, in the self-governing Dominions, who receive no grants or subsidies from this House or from the Irish Parliament, his compensation allowance would not be affected.

Sir J. REMNANT: I should like to ask whether it was in the mind of the right hon. Gentleman when he decided, in the case of the £5 a week man, that if he joined the Metropolitan Police, where they start with 70s. a week, he should only get the proportion of his compensation to bring it up to £5, that that was to be part of the policy of the Government in dealing with the police; whether they are not trying to get old and experienced policemen to join or remain in forces, in certain Departments, for instance, in this House at nighttime; whether experienced policemen are turned off and inexperienced men brought in because they can get them at a lower wage; and whether this is an attempt on the part of the Government to put men out of work in order to get the work done cheaper?

Sir H. GREENWOOD: I must reply to that. There is no such sinister design or such foolish purpose in the mind of the Government.

Sir J. REMNANT: You have done it in this House.

Sir H. GREENWOOD: No such thought ever occurred to my mind or the mind of the Government either.

Sir J. REMNANT: You make it worth a man's while to remain idle by this method of dealing with the disbanded men.

Sir H. GREENWOOD: That is not accurate. May I read the terms of disbandment circulated to all the men? I
will give a practical case of how this works out:
If a constable of 10 years' service who at the date of disbandment was in receipt of £4 10s. a week and is awarded a compensation allowance of 38s. a week, takes service in another police force at £3 10s. a week, his allowance will be suspended to the extent of 18s. a week.
That is to say, his taking service in a new police force will not be to his disadvantage, but he will get the pay of the new force, plus his compensation allowance, so that he will get the pay he received on the date of his disbandment from the old force.

Sir J. BUTCHER: The Sub-section which the Lords propose to leave out says that his pension may be suspended "in whole or in part." The right hon. Gentleman is talking of an administrative Order.

Sir H. GREENWOOD: I have given an example of the application of the Statute.

Sir W. JOYNSON-HICKS: Really, with the best intentions in the world in listening to my right hon. Friend, I do not think he has made out a case, and it is clear, as the hon. and learned Member for York (Sir J. Butcher) has said, that it may be that by administrative Order he is only going to take away a part of the pension, but he has power to take away the whole of it. If he takes service in another police force, the allowance may be suspended in whole or in part, so long as he remains in such force. Therefore, it seems to me that in the case of a tried constable who knows his work, the only business he is prevented from going into is the one he knows best, namely, that of a police constable. He may go into any other Government service, he may become a soldier and take his full soldier's pay, or he may become a postman and take his full postman's pay, although the pay of the soldier and postman are equally provided out of public funds. My right hon. Friend said there was a distinction between public funds and private businesses, that if, for instance, a man started a fried fish shop, he could take the whole of the profits, but that if his new salary came out of public funds, a deduction would be made from his pension, but that is not properly the case. It applies only to one very limited form of public employ-
ment, namely, the police force. I take it that if one of these men were so lucky as to get some sinecure office, like that of Chief Secretary, he would still be allowed to retain the Chief Secretary's salary, and also his full pension for his previous office. Yet the Chief Secretary's salary is paid out of public funds, just the same as if he became a constable. There is no rhyme or reason in this matter. My right hon. Friend tried to make out an argument in favour of the Clause as originally drawn, and I submit that he has failed completely on his own argument to convince the House that the Clause as originally drawn was just to these men. The right hon. Gentleman has no right to come here and to claim that the terms were too generous.

Sir H. GREENWOOD: I do not say that.

Sir W. JOYNSON-HICKS: But it comes to that. There is very little difference between complaining that they are generous and complaining that they are too generous. Why should he say anything about generosity? These pensions were earned, and were given to these

men, because Parliament thought that, under the particular circumstances, they ought to have them. Therefore, it is not right to say that they are to have something less good if they take service in a police force. If the terms exceed the bounds of fairness and justice, then the Chief Secretary has done wrong in asking us to grant them. He has no right to ask us to give a generous pension out of public money, but only to give what is fair and right, and he has no right to come down here and Prevent these men from earning their living in the way they can best do it in their own interests, and in the interests of the country, by penalising them if they attempt to do it. The House of Lords in this case has shown, as it occasionally does show, really stronger sense than the Government itself, and I hope the House will support the House of Lords in their Amendment if a Division takes plane.

Question put, "That this House doth disagree with the Lords in the said Amendment."

The House divided: Ayes, 169; Noes, 122.

Division No. 270.]
AYES.
[5.50 p. m.


Agg-Gardner, Sir James Tynte
Eyres-Monsell, Com. Bolton M.
Kellaway, Rt. Hon. Fredk, George


Atkey, A. R.
Faruuharson, Major A. C.
Kidd, James


Balrd, Sir John Lawrence
Fell, Sir Arthur
King, Captain Henry Douglas


Baldwin, Rt. Hon. Stanley
Fildes, Henry
Lambert, Rt. Hon. George


Balfour, Sir R. (Glasgow, Partick)
Fisher, Rt. Hon. Herbert A. L.
Law, Alfred J. (Rochdale)


Banbury, Rt. Hon. Sir Frederick G.
Flannery, Sir James Fortescue
Leigh, Sir John (Clapham)


Barlow, Sir Montague
Ford, Patrick Johnston
Lewis, Rt. Hon. J. H. (Univ., Wales)


Barnett, Major Richard W.
Forrest, Walter
Lloyd, George Butler


Barnston, Major Harry
Fraser, Major Sir Keith
Lloyd-Greame, Sir P.


Barrand, A. R.
Ganzoni, Sir John
Lorden, John William


Bartley-Denniss, Sir Edmund Robert
Gee, Captain Robert
Lowther, Maj.-Gen. Sir C. (Penrith)


Bellairs, Commander Carlyon W.
Gibbs, Colonel George Abraham
Macdonald, Rt. Hon. John Murray


Birchall, J. Dearman
Gilmour, Lieut-Colonel Sir John
McMicking Major Gilbert


Bird, Sir R. B. (Wolverhampton, W.)
Goff, Sir R. Park
Macnamara, Rt. Hon. Dr. T. J.


Boscawen, Rt. Hon. Sir A. Griffith.
Grant, James Augustus
Macpherson, Rt. Hon. James I.


Bowyer, Captain G. W. E.
Green, Joseph F. (Leicester, W.)
Mallalieu, Frederick William


Brassey, H. L. C.
Greene, Lt.-Col. Sir W. (Hack'y, N.)
Malone, Major P. B. (Tottenham, S.)


Breese, Major Charles E.
Greenwood, Rt. Hon. Sir Hamar
Martin, A E.


Bridgeman, Rt. Hon. William Clive
Grenfell, Edward C. (City of London)
Mason, Robert


Briggs, Harold
Guthrie, Thomas Maule
Mitchell, sir William Lane


Broad, Thomas Tucker
Hallwood, Augustine
Molson, Major John Elsdale


Brown, Major D. C.
Hall, Captain Sir Douglas Bernard
Mond, Rt. Hon. Sir Alfred Moritz


Buckley, Lieut.-Colonel A.
Hamilton, Sir George C.
Morrison, Hugh


Carew, Charles Robert S.
Harmsworth, C. B. (Bedford, Luton)
Munro, Rt. Hon. Robert


Casey, T. W.
Hennessy, Major J. R. G.
Murchison, C. K.


Cayzer, Major Herbert Robin
Hllder, Lieut.-Colonel Frank
Murray, Rt. Hon. C. D. (Edinburgh)


Chamberlain, Rt. Hn. J. A. (Birm., W.)
Holbrook, Sir Arthur Richard
Murray, John (Leeds, West)


Child, Brigadier-General Sir Hill
Holmes, J. Stanley
Neal, Arthur


Clay, Lieut.-Colonel H. H. Spender
Hood, Sir Joseph
Newman, Sir R. H. S. D. L. (Exeter)


Clough, Sir Robert
Hope, Sir H.(Stirling & Cl'ckm'nn'n, W.)
Newson, Sir Percy Wilson


Cohen, Major J. Brunel
Hopkins, John W. W.
Newton, Sir D. G. C. (Cambridge)


Conway, Sir W. Martin
Hopkinson, A. (Lancaster, Mossley)
Nicholson, William G. (Petersfield)


Cope, Major William
Horne, Sir R. S. (Glasgow, Hillhead)
Parker, James


Courthope, Lieut.-Col. George L.
Houfton, John Plowright
Parkinson, Sir Albert L. (Blackpool)


Davidson, J. C. C. (Hemel Hempstead)
Hudson, R. M.
Parry, Lieut.-Colonel Thomas Henry


Dewhurst, Lieut.-Commander Harry
Jameson, John Gordon
Pearce, Sir William


Ednam, Viscount
Jephcott, A. R.
Perkins, Walter Frank


Edwards, Allen C. (East Ham, S.)
Jesson, C.
Perring, William George


Edwards, Major J. (Aberavon)
Johnstone, Joseph
Pilditch Sir Philip


Evans, Ernest
Jones, G. W. H. (Stoke Newington)
Pinkham, Lieut.-Colonel Charles


Pollock, Rt. Hon. Sir Ernest Murray
Smithers, Sir Alfred W.
Weston, Colonel John Wakefield


Pownall, Lieut.-Colonel Assheton
Stanley, Major Hon. G. (Preston)
Wills, Lt.-Col. Sir Gilbert Alan H.


Pratt, John William
Stephenson, Lieut.-Colonel H. K
Wilson, Rt. Hon. Col. L. O. (R'ding)


Purchase, H. G.
Sugden, W. H.
Winterton, Earl


Raw, Lieutenant-Colonel Dr. N.
Sutherland, Sir William
Wise, Frederick


Richardson, Lt.-Col. Sir P. (Chertsey)
Taylor, J.
Wood, Hon. Edward F. L. (Ripon)


Roberts, Rt. Hon. G. H. (Norwich)
Thomas, Sir Robert J. (Wrexham)
Wood, Sir H. K. (Woolwich, West)


Roberts, Sir S. (Sheffield, Ecclesall)
Thomson, F. C. (Aberdeen, South)
Wood, Sir J. (Stalybridge & Hyde)


Robinson, S. (Brecon and Radnor)
Thomson, Sir W. Mitchell- (Maryhill)
Wood, Major Sir S. Hill- (High Peak)


Robinson, Sir T. (Lancs., Stretford)
Tickler, Thomas George
Worsfold, T. Cato


Rose, Frank H.
Tryon, Major George Clement
Yeo, Sir Alfred William


Roundell, Colonel R. F.
Wallace, J.
Young, E. H. (Norwich)


Samuel, A. M. (Surrey, Farnham)
Walters, Rt. Hon. Sir John Tudor
Younger, Sir George


Sanders, Colonel Sir Robert Arthur
Walton, J. (York, W. R., Don Valley)



Scott, A. M. (Glasgow, Bridgeton)
Ward, Col. J. (Stoke-upon-Trent)
TELLERS FOR THE AYES.—


Shaw, Hon. Alex. (Kilmarnock)
Warner, Sir T. Courtenay T.
Mr. Dudley Ward and Mr.


Simm, M. T. (Wallsend)
Warren, Sir Alfred H.
McCurdy.


Smith, Sir Malcolm (Orkney)
Watson, Captain John Bertrand



NOES.


Acland, Rt. Hon. Francis D
Gwynne, Rupert S.
Remnant, Sir James


Adair, Rear-Admiral Thomas B. S.
Hall, F. (York, W. R., Normanton)
Richardson, R. (Houghton-le-Spring)


Amnion, Charles George
Halls, Walter
Roberts, Samuel (Hereford, Hereford)


Archer-Shee, Lieut.-Colonel Martin
Hannon, Patrick Joseph Henry
Royce, William Stapleton


Armitage, Robert
Hartshorn, Vernon
Seddon, J. A.


Armstrong, Henry Bruce
Hayward, Evan
Sexton, James


Banton, George
Henderson, Rt. Hon. A. (Widnes)
Sbarman-Crawford, Robert G.


Betterton, Henry B.
Hills, Major John Waller
Shaw, Thomas (Preston]


Bowerman, Rt. Hon. Charles W.
Hirst, G. H.
Short, Alfred (Wednesbury)


Bramsdon, Sir Thomas
Hoare, Lieut.-Colonel Sir S. J. G.
Sitch, Charles H.


Brittain, Sir Harry
Hodge, Rt. Hon. John
Smith, W. R. (Wellingborough)


Bromfield, William
Hogge, James Myles
Spoor, B. G.


Brown, Brig.-Gen. Clifton (Newbury)
Hurd, Percy A,
Stanton, Charles Butt


Brown, James (Ayr and Bute)
Inskip, Thomas Walker H.
Stewart, Gershom


Cairns, John
Irving, Dan
Sueter, Rear-Admiral Murray Fraser


Cape, Thomas
John, William (Rhondda, West)
Swan, J. E.


Cecil, Rt. Hon. Sir Evelyn (Aston)
Jones, J. J. (West Ham, Silvertown)
Terrell, George (Wilts, Chippenham)


Cecil, Rt. Hon. Lord H. (Ox. Univ.)
Jones, Morgan (Caerphilly)
Terrell, Captain R. (Oxford, Henley)


Collins, Sir Godfrey (Greenock)
Joynson-Hicks, Sir William
Thomas, Rt. Hon. James H. (Derby)


Colvin, Brig.-General Richard Beale
Kelley, Major Fred (Rotherham)
Thomas, Brig.-Gen. Sir O. (Anglesey)


Craig, Captain C. C. (Antrim, South)
Kennedy, Thomas
Thomson, T. (Middlesbrough, West)


Curzon, Captain Viscount
Kenworthy, Lieut.-Commander J. M.
Thorne, W. (West Ham, Plaistow)


Davidson, Major-General Sir J. H.
Kenyon, Barnet
Waterson, A. E.


Davies, A. (Lancaster, Clitheroe)
Kiley, James Daniel
Watts-Morgan, Lieut-Col. D.


Davies, Rhys John (Westhoughton)
Larmor, Sir Joseph
Wedgwood, Colonel Josiah C.


Davies, Thomas (Cirencester)
Lawson, John James
White, Charles F. (Derby, Western)


Davison, Sir W. H. (Kensington, S.)
Lunn, William
White. Col. G. D. (Southport)


Dawson, Sir Philip
Maclean, Rt. Hon. Sir D. (Midlothian)
Whitla, Sir William


Doyle, N. Grattan
Macnaghten, Sir Malcolm
Wignall, James


Edwards, C. (Monmouth, Bedwellty)
Macquisten, F. A.
Williams, Aneurin (Durham, Consett)


Edwards, G. (Norfolk, South)
Marriott, John Arthur Ransome
Williams, Penry (Middlesbrough, E.)


Elvedon, Viscount
Murray, Hon. Gideon (St. Rollox)
Wilson, Capt. A. S. (Holderness)


Falle, Major Sir Bertram Godfrey
Myers, Thomas
Windsor, Viscount


Foot, Isaac
Nail, Major Joseph
Wintringham, Margaret


Foxcroft, Captain Charles Talbot
Nicholson, Brig.-Gen J. (Westminster)
Wolmer, Viscount


Gaibraith, Samuel 
O'Neill, Rt. Hon. Hugh
Wood, Major M. M. (Aberdeen, C.)


Glyn, Major Ralph
Pain, Brig.-Gen. Sir W. Hacket
Yate, Colonel Sir Charles Edward


Greer, Sir Harry
Parkinson, John Allen (Wigan)
Young, Robert (Lancaster, Newton)


Grenfell, D. R. (Glamorgan)
Pennefather, De Fonblanque



Gritten, W. G. Howard
Percy, Lord Eustace (Hastings)
TELLERS FOR THE NOES.—


Grundy, T. W. 
Raffan, Peter Wilson
Sir J. Butcher and Colonel


Guinness, Lieut-Col. Hon. W. E. 
Rawlinson, John Frederick Peel
Ashley.


Question put, and agreed to.

Amendment made, in lieu of the Lords Amendment disagreed with, in Subsection (3), after the word "force" ["in any police force"], insert "to which this Sub-section applies."—[Sir H. Greenwood.]

Lieut.-Colonel GUINNESS: I beg to move, at the end of Sub-section (3), to insert the words
This Sub-section applies to any police force the expenses of which are defrayed in whole or in part out of moneys provided by Parliament, or by any Parliament in Ireland, or out of funds assisted by the Exchequer or by any Exchequer in Ireland.
This Amendment is an alternative to the Lords Amendment which has just been defeated. It is a form of words which was brought up to the House of Lords by the Select Committee which originally considered this Bill. The effect of this compromise would be to leave men free to carry on their work as policemen in any of the great Dominion or Colonial forces to which they might be tempted to go.

Sir S. HOARE: I beg to second the Amendment.

Amendment agreed to.

Lords Amendment:

Leave out Sub-section (4).

Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKER: I ought to point out that this Amendment also involves a breach of privilege.

Sir H. GREENWOOD: I beg to move, "That this House doth disagree with the Lords in the said Amendment."
6.0 p.m.
This Amendment involves a breach of the privileges of this House, but I suggest it should also be rejected on its merits. This Amendment is a continuation of the Amendment decided on the last occasion. Their Lordships moved into the Bill that compensation allowances should not be taken into consideration by disbanded members of the Royal Irish Constabulary or the fact of securing an appointment in another police force affect the case. The phase we are dealing with now is a continuation of that principle. The previous Clause dealt with the double pay of the police in the circumstances specified, and this deals with double pensions. I must ask the House to support the Government in this action. Where a man receives compensation allowance on disbandment from the Royal Irish Constabulary, joins another police force, and ultimately retires from that police force, the question of his final pension must be considered in relation to his compensation allowance plus the pensionable period he has served in the second or other police force. It is exactly the same principle in regard to pensions as was involved previously in reference to pay. It is a principle that is universally carried out in the public service of this country. It is a principle that is considered most material in the equitable interests of the taxpayer, and it is not considered to be to the disadvantage of the policeman in so far as the securing of an appointment is concerned. We had the whole principle debated in the last Division, and I do not think it is necessary now to go into further details.

Sir J. BUTCHER: I agree with the Chief Secretary that the question involved is very much the same as the House rejected recently on the last Amendment and, personally, I hardly think it is worth while dividing the House again.

Lords Amendment:

In Sub-section (7), leave out the words
twenty-fifth day of January, nineteen hundred and twenty-two" and insert
sixteenth day of December nineteen hundred and twenty-one.

Sir H. GREENWOOD: I beg to move "That this House doth disagree with the Lords in the said Amendment."
Thin is not only a privilege Amendment, but it is also outside the scope of the Financial Resolution passed by this House. Therefore it would not be possible for the House to accept the Amendment. The short point is this: The disbandment of the Royal Irish Constabulary commenced on the 25th day of January, that is the date in the Bill. Lord Carson in another place moved the date to be put back to 16th December, 1921. In my opinion there is no possible ground for that. The plain fact is that the disbandment commenced on 25th January and that must be the date incorporated in the Bill. I agree that Lord Carson fixed the 16th December as the date on which the Treaty was approved by both Houses of Parliament, but it was not approved by the Parliament. of Southern Ireland till 14th January. The disbandment did not commence till after 14th January. The 25th January was the first day on which this disbandment became operative.

Mr. SPEAKER: This also is a privileged Amendment, and it likewise goes beyond the Financial Resolution.

Lord HUGH CECIL: The question of whether this is or is not outside the Financial Resolution does not appear to me for the moment to come into this particular stage. It has been repeatedly ruled from the Chair that Amendments which are outside the scope of the Bill altogether, according to our rules, may be agreed to here because each House is bound by its own procedure and we are bound as part of the comity of the two houses to consider each Amendment which the Lords sent to us. Therefore I submit the Financial Resolution makes no difference.
But I am anxious to ascertain from the Chief Secretary exactly what is the point involved. I do not quite understand what difference it makes either from the point of view of this House or the point of view of the other House whether we have the date in January or December. They are
not very far apart. Were a large number of constables disbanded in the interval As a matter of fact, it may make a great difference to a great number of people, and, if so, I think the argument of generosity which the Chief Secretary has already put should have great weight. If there are a large number of people, not perhaps exactly in the same position as the people to whom this Bill is intended to give help, who retired between the two dates, panic-stricken or driven out owing to the state of the country, it would be very hard, merely on a point of law as to whether one date is in point of form the right date, to deprive these people of that compensation which others enjoy who are in substance exactly in the same position: Perhaps the Chief Secretary can tell us as to the number of people? If there are a considerable number in the same position as the others, the mere difference of date should not be allowed to work to their hurt.

Sir H. GREENWOOD: L can assure the Noble Lord that there were not a great number of persons retired. I take it it would be most irregular to put the date back. To put back the date because it was the date when the Treaty was approved, to my mind is not sound ground for a change of date on which so much depends. I am glad to assure the Noble Lord that so far as I know there is nothing at all in this matter except that 25th January was the date of the disbandment. I must remind the House that the disbandment began with the auxiliaries, and the English recruits, while the Irish members of the Royal Irish Constabulary were the last to be disbanded.

Sir J. BUTCHER: There are very obvious reasons why, apart from the technicalities, this Amendment of the Lords should be accepted. Let me tell the House some reasons within my own knowledge. Between the date suggested in Lord Carson's Amendment, namely, 19th December and 25th January, the date in the Bill, a very considerable number of members of the Royal Irish Constabulary retired for one reason or another. These men did not get anything like as good terms as if they had been kept on till 25th January. They got far less pensions. As a matter of fact, what Lord Carson asked in the House of Lords was: "Why should these men, because they retired before 25th January, be less
well treated than men who retired after nth January?" Everyone knew that the Treaty had been signed on 16th December, and that the force would have to be disbanded, although not in language yet in fact not in words but in fact the disbandment had begun as from December, 1921. So it is a mere matter of language that these men who retired before 25th January, 1922, and after 16th December, 1921, should be treated as disbanded or retired men. We say they ought to be treated as disbanded men, because they would get much larger pensions. Therefore, there is substance in the matter.
It is not a mere question of one or two people who might be affected. Then my right hon. Friend says, "Oh, but it is outside the Financial Resolution." I think it is. I think he is right. But that makes it really possible for us to accept this Amendment of the Lords, and I submit that that is the law. Will my right hon. Friend do in this case what he has already done in another ease of proved hardship? Will he meet the. ease, not in this Bill, perhaps, but by an Amendment of the. Pensions Act of 1922? Will he say that the men who left the force after the Treaty had been sanctioned on the 16th December, 1921, should be treated in the same manner as the men who were disbanded after 25th January, 1922? It can quite easily be done by an Amendment of the Pensions Act. My right hon. Friend says, "Oh, but the disbandment in fact began on 95th January, 1922." In fact, it did, but it was illegal! May I urge that until this House sanctioned the disbandment by this Bill his administrative action of disbandment was absolutely illegal. It is no good talking about 25th January as if it were some sacred date. It was the first day possible on which my right hon. Friend began to do something quite illegal. If he did this illegality on 25th January, 1922, I would ask him to go a little further and put the date of the beginning of the illegality on a date which is consonant with justice and equity. If he must be illegal, let him, at any rate, instil some equity into it. Let him make amends for this undoubted illegality by doing a little justice and by embodying what I suggest in the Pensions Act. That will wipe out part of the illegality and do justice to a very deserving class. Will the right hon. Gentleman give me an assurance that he will try his persuasive-
ness in another place to get an Amendment of this kind made in the Pensions Act of 1922.

Sir H. GREENWOOD: I can only repeat what I have already said, namely, that I cannot accept this Amendment. I can assure the Noble Lord (Lord H. Cecil) that the total number who left the force between 16th December and 25th January was not very large, and only numbered about 40, 20 of them owing to injuries on duty. I may point out that I am making provision for these men in a subsequent Amendment. Fourteen of these men retired on 25 years' service or upwards, and they have a right to retire on 25-60ths or 30-60ths of their pay in the way of pension. Four of these retired with a. gratuity. There was no flood of retirement in the interim period, as appears to be supposed. For these reasons I cannot go hack on the date, hut, as I have already stated, I am providing in a subsequent Amendment, at a considerable increase of cost, for those who retired during the earlier period owing to injuries received on duty. I hope the House will accept this explanation as satisfactory. I regret that my hon. and learned Friend (Sir J. Butcher) has tried to impeach me for illegality, but I assure him that I have done my best in this matter.

Lords Amendment:

In Sub-section (9), after the word "by" ["exercised by the Treasury"], insert "a Secretary of State with the approval of."

Sir H. GREENWOOD: I beg to move "That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said Amendment."

This Amendment is to make the powers exercisable by the Lord-Lieutenant or Inspector-General also exercisable by a Secretary of State with the approval of the Treasury. When the Bill went to the House of Lords their Lordships inserted these words which the Government have accepted.

Lords Amendment:

At the end of Sub-section (9) insert
subject to right of appeal to the tribunal mentioned in Section two,

Sir H. GREENWOOD: I beg to move, "That this House doth disagree with the Lords in the said Amendment."

Mr. SPEAKER: This Amendment must be taken in connection with the next two new Clauses on the Paper. Taking them together, they are privileged Amendments.

Sir H. GREENWOOD: I am sure the House will support me in disagreeing with this Amendment. It means after the Secretary of State Lind the Treasury have agreed to a certain decision in regard to pensions that that decision will be amenable to the trip anal set up under Section 2. Hon. Members will see that it is quite impossible for me to accept an Amendment of this kind. thus leaving the repealing of a decision of the Secretary of State and the Treasury to a tribunal of this kind. I think the House will agree that this is an Amendment which we cannot reasonably aecept.

Lord H. CECIL: I do not share the view of the right hon. Gentleman that a decision of the Secretary of State and the Treasury should not be reviewed by another impartial tribunal. The object of the Lords Amendment is to give security against unfair treatment prompted by political motives and if the Government are angry with the House of Lords for putting in such an Amendment they have only themselves to blame because of the profound mistrust the policy of the Government has inspired in the public mind in regard to decisions of this kind. The people feel that they cannot trust the Ministers of the State to be fair and therefore you want something more trustworthy than Ministers' decisions which do not always proceed upon any rule of honest dealing. I am sorry that owing to a question of privilege the Chief Secretary is allowed to disagree with this Amendment. I think we might have waived our privilege with a view of meeting the desire that there should be an impartial and trustworthy authority to deal with these matters which will not yield to political pressure, or the exigencies of a particular Ministerial necessity. I think we should secure for these men something better than Ministerial authority, and I regret that the right hon. Gentleman will not accept this Amendment,

Sir J. BUTCHER: I hardly think the Chief Secretary has given this important
Amendment sufficient consideration. What the men want is some tribunal outside the Treasury official which will really decide their case according to what they think is justice. I am not saying a word against the Treasury on this point, and as a rule they do everything I ask them. In a case of this sort you want not only justice done, but you want to let the men feel that justice has been done to their case, and therefore it is important that we should have an impartial tribunal to review these decisions.
Let me call attention to a, particular case which happened in the course of disbandment. There was the case of a man who had served 14 years, 5 months, and 25 days in the Royal Irish Constabulary and he was discharged on a certain day. If he had been allowed to serve 15 days longer he would have got £10 a year more pension. Why was this man discharged? He was turned out because in another 15 days the Government would have to provide him with another £10 on his pension. The facts of this case have been gone into and Lord Carson suggested that the reason for turning him out was in order to save £10 a year. Lord Peel in another place never ventured to suggest that Lord Carson's facts were inaccurate and here we have a very gross injustice done by a Treasury official. If there had been a tribunal of the sort we desire to set up then this mistake could have been corrected, and why should it not be put right?
The Chief Secretary says, "How could you have a tribunal overriding the Treasury official, especially when that official has the assistance of the Secretary of State behind him." If you deal with that question in the abstract I see no reason why you should not have this tribunal. We all know how these decisions are arrived at. The actual facts of the case. do not come before the Secretary of State. What happens is that some subordinate official goes into the matter, probably inadequately, and he says, "Here is my decision," and the Secretary of State says, "All right." Therefore you do not have the Chancellor of the Exchequer bringing his mind to bear on these questions, and it is done by a subordinate official of the Treasury. Therefore, we are not really overriding the Under-Secretary of State or the First Lord of the Treasury or the
Chancellor of the Exchequer, but only some inadequate decision of a subordinate.
I think we have a precedent fur this tribunal in the case of the Pensions Committee, which is a tribunal that can override the Pensions Minister, and from which there is no appeal. If such a tribunal is necessary in the ease of Navy and Army pensions, why is it not necessary for police pensions? What is the difference between the tribunal set up to deal with the pensions of disabled soldiers and that which is sought to be set up by this Amendment? I hope the Chief Secretary will give more attention to this point, and will agree to the setting up of this tribunal which will remedy those undoubted cases of injustice.

Lords Amendment:

After Clause I insert

NEW CLAUSE—(Tribunal for dealing with individual cases of hardship.)

A. For the purpose of dealing with questions arising in the administration of this Act there shall be appointed a tribunal with such powers as appear in the Second and Third Schedules to this Act.

Disagreed with.

Lords Amendment:

After Clause 1 insert

NEW CLAUSE.—(Provisions as to disturb ance allowance, etc.)

B.—(1) The provisions as to disturbance allowance, free railway warrant, and separation allowance contained in the Third Schedule to this Act shall apply with respect to any officer or man of the Royal Irish Constabulary to whom compensation is payable under Section one of this Act or who at the date fixed for the disbandment of the force is in receipt of a pension under the enactments relating to the Royal Irish Constabulary and is at that date resident in Ireland.

(2) This Section shall have effect until the thirtieth day of June, nineteen hundred and twenty-four, and no longer, unless before that date it is extended for a further period by His Majesty by Order in Council.

Sir H. GREENWOOD: I beg to move, "That this House doth disagree with the Lords in the said Amendment."
This is also a privilege Amendment. I will explain my position. As I understand it, the desire is that there should be incorporated in the Bill the terms of disbandment which were printed in a White Paper laid on the Table of this House many months ago and which were also distributed to the force. We object to incorporating in the Bill these terms of disbandment mainly in the interests of the force itself. May I explain what I mean by that? If you put the terms into the Bill, then they become statutory and fixed. The terms of disbandment, however, are administrative terms. We can alter them, and have altered them, on several occasions, every time to the advantage of the police. In the terms of disbandment as originally framed there were no separate allowances for the wives of officers and men who were compelled to leave Ireland. We provided for them under an administrative order, and I am now negotiating with the Treasury to extend the allowances month by month. If we put it in the Bill, the matter would he fixed for a period of three months only. I think myself it would be a disadvantage to include the terms in the Bill, and, therefore, on the merits of the case quite independently of the fact that it is a privilege Amendment outside the scope of the Financial Resolution, I object to the terms being incorporated in the Bill.

Sir J. BUTCHER: Will the right hon. Gentleman make a statement on this point? Under the terms of disbandment, a disbanded policeman who goes to his home in Ireland and is driven away by threats, gets certain advantages in the shape of allowances. But supposing, instead of being a disbanded man under the terms of this Bill, he is a pensioner who had been pensioned a month, a year, or more. Supposing this unfortunate man—and this has occurred in a great many cases—when at his home in Ireland is visited by a band of armed ruffians and told to turn out of his home and to fly the country. He has to come to England. Neither under this Bill, nor ander any other provision, does that man get a farthing for being driven away from his home. I know the Chief Secretary has a case of that sort in his mind. I believe he realises that provision should be made for such cases. I should
be very glad if he will make a statement to the effect that be will. either by an Amendment of the Pensions Order, or by some other methods, deal with these cases of gross hardship—.he cases of men not disbanded under the Act but pensioned some time before, who do not get a farthing when forced to come to England. I hope the right hon. Gentleman will be able to satisfy the House on this point.

Sir H. GREENWOOD: I am very glad to make a statement. I can only speak, of course, by permission of the House. My point is that this proposal is quite outside the scope of the Bill. The argument advanced by the hon. and learned Member for York (Sir j Butcher) was, that while the Bill deals with disbanded men, nothing is done for pensioners of the Royal Irish Constabulary who took their pensions before January. There are 7,000 or 8,000 of these men, most. of whom have passed middle age, and many of whom are very old. The great majority have had nothing to do with recent troubles in Ireland, and, I believe, are living in quiet and comfort in different parts of the country. Oat of the 7,000 or 8,000 pensioned men, there have been some 40 who have had to come over to this country As far as we know, every Irish policeman in trouble comes to the Irish Office or to some other office connected with the force here. I may add incidentally that the whole of the pensions of the force and the disbandment and compensation allowances are now paid from the London Office, and are administered by the Paymaster-General's Department in Whitehall. Reverting to these pensioners, we do not believe there is going to be any great rush of them from Ireland owing to molestation; but if any pensioner finds himself in distress, we are willing to give him free railway warrants for himself and his wife and family from any part of Ireland to England, and to advance him money when he gets to this country if he has to come by reason of molestation. Then he goes before the Committee presided over by the hon. and gallant Member for Chelsea (Sir S. Hoare), and that body deals with him as an Irish refugee, and is in a position to deal with him according to his needs. I think that is the better way of meeting such cases. To my mind, it is the only way of doing so. These pen-
sioners obviously cannot be dealt with in this Bill. I repeat I do not believe there will be any great rush of them to this country, but in case any number, however small, should come, I think what I have said meets their case.

Lord H. CECIL: We are very much obliged to the right hon. Gentleman for his interesting explanation. It is obvious if we reject the Lords Amendment we put these people in the position that they are not entitled to receive anything except as a matter of grace and favour, and not as a statutory right. As I understand the right hon. Gentleman's explanation, the difference between accepting and rejecting the Lords Amendment is this: Acceptance will give these people a statutory right to receive that which already they can receive by administrative order, the administrative order I presume being eventually made good by Parliament under the Appropriation Act. It will be observed that, the point of privilege is extremely technical. The Lords do not really impose any fresh charge on the people. They are putting into this Bill what naturally the House of Commons would put into it. They are not really adding to the burdens of the people.

Mr. SPEAKER: I must take exception to that statement. This House must uphold its own authority, and cannot permit the other House to impose a charge.

Lord H. CECIL: It would, no doubt, be a breach of privilege to do that, but I submit that this Amendment would not have that effect. It would he a serious breach of privilege for the Lords to interfere with our control of finance, but if, as I understand, it is the policy and intention of the majority of this House that these people should receive this money, then, so far as the privilege of this House is concerned, it is only a matter of form. It is only a question whether it shall be done in one way or another. The Chief Secretary, in arguing on the merits of the question, said the police would be really better off, because his system would be more elastic. Elasticity is, of course, a good thing if it works favourably to the person who is supposed to benefit, but it has its disadvantages, because it gives the man a sense of insecurity. He has not the sanction of a definite and settled
thing on which he can rely. He has to rely on what the Government may do for him in the course of the financial year. I confess the case of these men is very hard. Confessedly, they can have no compensation under this Bill. They are deserving of the sympathy of the House; they are deserving of justice for the great public services they have rendered, for the good work they have done, and for the suffering they have borne inconsequence. It is very hard indeed that we should, on a very narrow question of privilege and on a technicality, which to us is interesting because it is bound up with the great history of this House, it is very hard, I say, to people whose livelihood depends on our decision that they should have this compensation withheld. I think we ought to put them in a favourable position, and on the grounds of humanity I urge that u e should not disagree with the Lords Amendment in this case. This is an occasion on which the Government might very well move the House to waive its privilege and to agree with the Lords and thus put the people with whom we are dealing in the position they are entitled to be of having statutory security. They have suffered, some, of them have been wounded, they have been driven from their homes, and it is up to us to help them. We ought not, therefore, to stand on the letter of our privilege. We ought to give them that statutory security which everybody should have, and not leave it to the grace and favour of an administrative order I hope the Government will treat these men in the generous spirit which they profess to desire to show.

Sir H. GREENWOOD: May I again intervene. I am not opposing this Amendment entirely on the ground of privilege. I say it is outside the Financial Resolution, and, as I understand it, it would necessitate the introduction of another Financial Resolution if this is agreed to. That is my view. I may be wrong, I repeat that the Lords Amendment is outside the Financial Resolution, and that precludes the House accepting it.

Lord H. CECIL: I submit that the Financial Resolution does not hind the House at this stage. The Financial Resolution only really determines the scope of the Bill, and it has been repeatedly ruled that Amendments outside the
scope of the Bill, which cannot be put in in this House, can, if they are put in in the other House, be agreed to by this House when they come down as Lords Amendments. I believe that has been repeatedly ruled, and I submit that this case comes under that ruling. It is only necessary for us to make an entry in the journal of the House that the Amendment does carry out the intention of the House, and, if that were done, we should not he breaking down the position of this House.

Sir COURTENAY WARNER: The Noble Lord has put his point in a very intricate manner. If it be true that it would be to the benefit of these men that they should have a statutory claim, then it certainly amounts to a charge on the public, and, therefore, it is absolutely a breach of privilege.

Lord H. CECIL: It is a question of waiving the privilege.

Sir C. WARNER: But the Noble Lord said it could be brought in in another place. It is not a sound proposition that the Lords in another place should be able to put charges into the Bill. The point is distinctly this. If it is to be of any benefit at all, whether a benefit in money or by claiming a thing as a right instead of by grace, then I submit it is a breach of privilege to put it in in this way.

Lord H. CECIL: I agree with that. I was not contending that that would not be a breach of privilege.

Lieut.-Colonel ARCHER-SHEE: This ease does not differ very much from the other. As the right hon. Gentleman has just said, there are a good many things to be considered, in regard to what would be effected by adopting the same procedure with reference to the men who left the force before its disbandment took place as to those actually disbanded. He told us there were not a great number of men who would be likely to be affected, hut surely that weakened his argument for refusing to agree with the Lords Amendment. He has said that these men who retired or were pensioned before the date of disbandment, if they are driven out of Ireland now and brought over to this country, will get a free railway warrant, and will also be referred to the Committee presided over by the hon. Baronet the Member for Chelsea
(Sir S. Hoare). That, however, is not nearly as good as the provision which it is sought to insert in the Bill under the Lords Amendment, for under that they would get separation allowance and the disturbance allowance Which is given to these other men. I think the House has already shown that it wants to he absolutely fair to these ex-constables. Take the case of those men who retired just before the date of disbandment. Many of them are marked men, and it is quite possible that. several—perhaps hundreds—of them will he driven out of Ireland, especially if things get worse than they are at present. In that case the right hon. Gentleman says the only thing he is going to offer them is a railway warrant, and then they will be passed on to the Committee of the hon. Baronet the Member for Chelsea. Everyone knows that that. Committee is short of funds. It has any number of other refugees to deal with, and will not have the necessary money to deal equitably and fairly with these ex-constables of the Royal Irish Constabulary. I cannot see why the right hon. Gentleman cannot accept this Amendment, just as he has accepted the others, and I think it is only fair and just to these men to put it in the Bill now.

Mr. SPEAKER: The Noble Lord the Member for Oxford University (Lord H. Cecil) put a point to me, just now with regard to this Amendment, not on the question of privilege, but on the, question of its being outside the Money Resolution. I have looked up the matter, and I find that there are two cases on record in which the House agreed with the Lords in an Amendment like this. But in each case the House preceded that, by going into Committee, and passing a new Financial Resolution, in order to make it competent for them to agree with the Amendment.

Lord H. CECIL: I beg pardon.

Lords Amendment:

After Clause 2, insert:

NEW CLAUSE.—(Pension of officer or con-stable retired mice 1st January, 1919, through unfitness caused by injury.)

C. Any officer or constable of the force who since the first day of January nineteen
hundred and nineteen has been retired by reason of unfitness caused by injury inflicted in the course of his duty shall be entitled if still living to the same pension as he would have been awarded if he had continued to serve up to the date of disbandment under this Act.

Mr. SPEAKER: This, again, is a privilege Amendment, and also goes beyond the Money Resolution

Sir H. GREENWOOD: I beg to move, "That this House doth disagree with the Lords in the said Amendment."
As I explained in my opening remarks, this is an Amendment which I accept in practice, but which cannot incorporate in the Bill, because it is not only a breach of privilege, but is outside the Financial Resolution. I assured the House, however, in my opening remarks, that I had made arrangements with my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and he has agreed that on and after 1st. April, 1919, those police officers and men who had been injured during the course of their duties in Ireland would have their wound or injury pensions levelled up to what their compensation allowance would have been had they remained unwounded in the force up to the time disbandment. That is a concession which I am very glad indeed to make, and one in which, I am sure, the House will support me. I can only make it by amending what is known as the R.I.C. Pension Order, 1922, which I shall forthwith set about doing. I hope that the House will disagree with this Amendment on that understanding.

Sir W. DAVISON: There is one point on which I am still not quite clear. The Chief Secretary has said that he would introduce provisions into the Pensions Regulations which would enable men who had been wounded to have their pensions levelled up to the same position as unwounded men who were disbanded at the winding up of the Royal Irish Constabulary. As the right hon. Gentleman will remember, however, wounded men who remained in the Royal Irish Constabulary until the date of disbandment of the force were entitled, and are entitled, to receive a contribution to the award which was given them in respect of their wounds, in addition to the compensation which they would have received on being demobilised in the ordinary way. What I want to be sure about is that the men who had to leave the Royal Irish
Constabulary, owing to their having been wounded in the discharge of their duty, prior to the date of disbandment, will be in the same position as those who were able to remain in the force until the date of disbandment, but who were also wounded prior to the date of disbandment. These men to whom I have referred last, who were wounded, but not so severely as to necessitate discharge from the Royal Irish Constabulary before the time came for disbandment, will be entitled, not only to the allowance which all constables receive on disbandment, but also to a special allowance in respect of their wounds. I should like an assurance from the right hon. Gentleman that those men who were wounded, and were obliged to leave the force because of their wounds before the date came for disbandment, shall not be in a worse position than the men who were wounded and were disbanded at the date of the disbandment of the force.

Mr. A. SHORT: The House will not quarrel with, but will rather welcome, the concession which the right hon. Gentleman proposes to make in this matter. He appears, however, to have fixed upon let April, 1919, as the date from which this concession will operate, while their Lordships, I observe, fix 1st January, 1919. If I understand the position aright, I take it that officers and constables who, by reason of unfitness caused by injuries inflicted in the course of their duties, retired before 1st April, 1919, will not receive any advantage from the amendment of the. Pension Order which the right hon. Gentleman proposes to make. If my view as to that he correct, it seems to me to involve a great injustice to, it may be, a number of men who, because of wounds, were compelled to retire from the Service prior to 1st April, 1919. The right hon. Gentleman, in his opening statement, said that he thought he had covered those cases substantially. What does he mean by substantially? Does he mean that there were a few, it may be a minority, who retired from the force before 1st April, 1919, on account of wounds caused in the course of their duty, and who will no4 have the pensions which were allocated to them on the basis of wounds increased by the concession that he is now proposing?
I think the House is entitled to ask the right hon. Gentleman to give us some
figures as to how many of these constables and officers were compelled to retire from the force, by reason of wounds, prior to 1st April, 1919. If I understand aright the feeling of the House in this matter, it is that no officer or constable should be done any injustice in connection with it, and the fact that the right hon. Gentleman is willing to accept their Lordships' provision by way of amending the Pension Order, is an indication that he also shares the generous view of the House. I ventured, in my remarks following the right hon. Gentleman's opening statement, to call attention to this matter, and I was hoping that he would give us the figures for which I asked. I must say I am disappointed that he has not done so. I have a feeling that some of these officers will not have their pensions increased, and, if that be so, we shall, in accepting even the concession proposed by the right hon. Gentleman, be doing an injustice to those who retired before 1st April, 1919. I should be glad to have some assurance that, all who retired from this force by reason of wounds or injuries sustained in the course of their duty will have the benefit of this concession.

Sir J. BUTCHER: I desire to support the view put forward by the hon. Member for Wednesbury (Mr. A. Short), and it is all the more important because men who retired before 1st April, 1919, got, in the ordinary course, a most miserable pension, as my right hon. Friend will agree. It was ludicrously small. Those who retired after 1st April 1919, had their pensions very much improved, and, therefore, the point urged by my hon. Friend becomes all the more important. Otherwise the man who retired before 1st April 1919, on this wretched pension, and who was wounded at the same time, will not only receive a totally inadequate pension on account of his wound, but will lose the benefit of the Disbandment Act, and receive far less, because he is wounded, than if he had not been wounded, for he loses two or three years in the Service, he bcomes a, cripple for life, and, in addition to that, has a far smaller pension than he would have had if he had not been wounded and if he had retired at the date of disbandment. I hope that when the Pensions Order, 1922, is revised, as my right hon. Friend has
promised it shall be, he will take this point into account.

Sir H. GREENWOOD: The point raised by the hon. Memoer for Wednesbury (Mr. A. Short) is the point as to date. Their Lordships, in another place, wished the date to be put back to 1st January, 1919, but the date which I am compelled to take is 1st April, 1919, and for this reason. It was on 1st April, 1919, that all the police forces in Great Britain and Ireland started on new scales of pay and pension, following the Report of Lord Desborough's Committee. I cannot go further back in meeting the cases of these men; I must fix that, as the starting date, and, therefore, the period between 1st January and 1st April. 1919, cannot come in. I am glad to say. however, that I am informed that none of these cases arise in that particular period, and, therefore, there is no practical reason for including it, but I could not include it in any case, for administrative reasons. I cannot go into the case of these pro-April, 1919, pensions again. I admit that there are many hard cases, not only in Ireland but in this country as well, where the scale is much lower before April, 1919, than after that date.
7.0 p.m.
The point raised by the hon. Member for Kensington (Sir W. Davison) is with reference to two classes of injured constables. There is the constable who was injured on duty, who recovers from his injury, continues on duty, and is absorbed into the force; and as a rule, when a man is injured in an ambush or anything of that sort, promotion or other award follows. That is not the case with which we are dealing in this Amendment. The case we are now dealing with is that of a man who has been injured since 1st April, 1919. and who, because of the seriousness of his injury, is unable to continue serving in the force. Then he retires from the force with a special injury pension. In some cases—not in many, I am glad to say—his wound pension is less than his compensation allowance would have been had he remained unwounded up to the date of disbandment. I think it would meet his case if he were not disadvantaged by the wound he received in the course of his duty. All these injured men, whether in the force at the time of disbandment or not. also get a malicious injury award quite independent of the compensation
allowance we have given. This is unique, and in no other country are malicious injury awards given to members of a police force for doing their duty.

SCHEDULE.

The Rules in the Ninth Schedule to the Government of Ireland Act, 1920, shall apply for the purposes of the award of compensation under Section one of this Act, subject to the following modifications:—

(1) Any reference to the Lord Lieutenant shall be construed as a reference to the Treasury, and the expression "existing enactments" shall be construed as meaning enactments in force at the time of the passing of this Act and any Orders made under those enactments and in force at that time.

(2) The following proviso shall be added at the end of Rule 2:—
Provided that in the case of the surgeon of the Royal Irish Constabulary his compensation allowance may, should he so desire, be calculated in like manner as the pension which he would have been entitled to receive on retirement under the existing enactments applicable to him if the years to be added as aforesaid were added to his years of age instead of to his completed years of actual service.

(3) Rule 3 shall not apply.

(4) The following rule shall be substituted for Rule 4:—
(4) The allowance awarded to an officer or constable shall in no case exceed two-thirds of the salary on which the allowance is calculated.

(5) The following words shall be added at the end of Rule 5, "and as if his years of service had been the years on which the allowance was calculated."

Lords Amendment: Leave out the Schedule and insert as new Schedules.

SCHEDULES.

FIRST SCHEDULE.

PART I.

RULES.

1. The compensation which may be awarded to an officer or constable shall be an annual allowance.

2. The annual allowance shall he calculated in like manner as the pension which the officer or constable would have been entitled to receive if he had retired for length of service under the existing enactments applicable to him, and had been qualified in respect of his length of service for a pension, save that for the purposes of that calculation. the following provisions shall have effect:—

(a) There shall be added to his completed years of actual service if the proportion of salary on which his allowance is calculated is one-fiftieth, ten years, and if that proportion is one sixtieth, twelve years;
(b) His salary shall be taken at the amount which it would have reached if he had continued to serve in the same rank for the number of years so added, and in the case of a district inspector of the third class, as if he were entitled to promotion to the second class on the completion of one and a half years' service in the third class, and, in the case of a district inspector of the second class, as if he were entitled to promotion to the first class on the completion of eleven years' service in the second class;
(c) If the number of his completed years of service, as reckoned under this Rule, is less than the minimum number of years of service for which provision as respects pensions is made in the appropriate pension scale, that scale shall apply with the substitution of the number of his completed years of service as so reckoned for that minimum number; and
(d) If he has, in addition to his completed years of actual service, served for a period exceeding six months, his service for that period shall be reckoned as a completed year of actual service:
Provided that in the case of the surgeon of the Royal Irish Constabulary his compensation allowance may, should he so desire, be calculated in like manner as the pension which he would have been entitled to receive on retirement under the existing enactments applicable to him if the years to be added as aforesaid were added to his years of age instead of to his completed years of actual service.

3. The allowance awarded to an officer or constable shall in no case exceed two-thirds of the salary on which the allowance is calculated.

4. In the event of an officer or constable dying after an annual allowance has been awarded to him under this Act, the Treasury may, if they think fit, grant a pension or gratuities to the widow and children of the officer or constable in like manner as if the allowance were a pension granted to the officer or constable on retirement, and as if his years of service had been the years on which the allowance was calculated.

5. To these Rules the expression "existing enactments" means enactments in force at the time of the passing of this Act, and includes any Orders made under those enactments and in force at that time.

PART II.

ASSIGNMENT OF PENSIONS AND REGULATIONS AS TO PAYMENT OF PENSIONS, ETC.

15. The following provisions shall have effect with respect to every pension, allowance, and gratuity (in this Article referred
to as a grant) payable under this order or under the Interim order to any person (in this Article referred to as the pensioner):—

(1) Every assignment of and charge on a grant, and every agreement to assign or charge a grant, shall, except so far as made for the benefit of the family of the pensioner, be void, and on the bankruptcy of the pensioner the grant shall not pass to any trustee or other person acting on behalf of the creditors:
(2)where any sum is due from the pensioner to the Inspector-General or to the Crown, the Inspector-General may deduct the amount of any such sum from the grant:
(3) On the death of a pensioner to whom a sum not exceeding one hundred pounds is due on account of a grant, then, if the Inspector-General so direct, probate or other proof of the title of the personal representative of the deceased may be dispensed with, and the sum may be paid or distributed to or among the persons appearing to the Inspector-General to be beneficially entitled to the personal estate of the deceased pensioner or to or among any one or more of those persons, or in the case of the illegitimacy of the deceased pensioner, to or among such persons as the Inspector-General may think fit, and the Inspector-General, and any officer of the Inspector-General making the payment or distribution:
(4) Every grant which is a pension or allowance (other then a pension or allowance payable to an officer of higher rank then a county inspector or to the widow or children of such officer) shall be paid, after the first instalment, in advance, except in the case of a refusal to quit police quarters or premises owned or rented by or on behalf of the Inspector-General or to give up any equipment or to make any payment due to the Inspector-General; but where a person dies whilst in receipt of a grant paid in advance, no return shall be required of any payments which have been made in respect of any period after his death.

forfeiture of pension or Allowance.

16.—(1) A pension or allowance under this Order is granted only upon condition that it becomes forfeited and may be with drawn by the Inspector-General, with the consent of the Treasury, in any of the following cases, that is to say, if the grantee—

(a) is convicted of any offence and is sentenced to penal servitude or to imprisonment for a term exceeding three months; or
(b) knowingly associates with thieves or reputed thieves; or
1348
(c) refused to give to the police all information and assistance in the power of the grantee, for the detection of crime, for the apprehension of criminals, or for the suppression of any disturbance of the public peace; and
(d) enters into or continues to carry on any business, occupation or employment which is illegal, or in which the grantee has made use of the fact of former employment in the force in a manner which the Inspector-General considers to be discreditable or improper; or
(e) supplies to any person or publishes in a manner which the Inspector-General considers to be discreditable or improper any information which the grantee may have obtained in the course of employment in the force: or
(f) solicits or, without the consent of the Inspector-General, accepts directly, or indirectly, any testimonial or gift of a pecuniary value on retirement from the force, or otherwise in connection with his service in the force; or
(g) enters into or continues in any business, occupation, or employment as a private detective, after being prohibited to do so by the Inspector-General on any reasonable grounds.

(2) Such forfeiture and withdrawal may affect the pension or allowance wholly or in part, and may be permanent or temporary as the Inspector-General with the consent of the Treasury may determine.

SECOND SCHEDULE.

TRIBUNAL FOE DEALING WITH INDIVIDUAL CASES Os HAansmr.

The powers of the tribunal appointed under this Act shall be as follows:—

1. To recommend—

(a) The extension to a maximum of six months' pay of the disturbance allowance for the purpose of removal which may be granted under the Third Schedule to this Act, in any case where in the opinion of the tribunal, the amount which has been so granted is inadequate.
(b) In exceptional cases the payment of gratuities, in addition to disturbance allowance, up to a maximum of six months' pay.
(c) Such other exceptional provision as any individual ease submitted to it may appear to require.

2. To deal with matters referred to the tribunal under the Third Schedule to this Act or otherwise.

THIRD SCHEDULE.

(A) DISTURBANCE ALLOWANCE.

If any officer or man, owing to molestation or danger or (in the case of an officer or man to whom compensation is payable under Section one of this Act) for any other cause whatsoever, moves his home either to another
place in Ireland or to any place outside Ireland, he shall be entitled to be repaid the reasonable costs incurred in connection with such removal up to a maximum of one month's pay for unmarried men, two months' pay for married men with less than three children, and three months' pay for married men with three or more children.

These allowances will be payable on application at any time within six months of the date of disbandment.

In order to avoid any delay in the payment of these allowances, they will be payable on demand at the date of disbandment or at any time within six months thereafter; every officer or man who receives such allowance will be required to produce to the tribunal appointed under this Act, evidence that he has in fact moved his home; and if he has not moved his home or if the reasonable expenses incurred in connection with such removal are less than the amount of the allowance which he has received, the tribunal may require him to refund the whole or part of the allowance, as the case may be.

In eases of officers and men holding acting rank above that of their substantive rank, disturbance allowance will be calculated upon the pay of the acting rank. In cases where officers or men holding acting rank have already been disbanded and have received disturbance allowance calculated upon their substantive pay, application may be made to the Chief Secretary or the Colonial Office, for the payment of the difference between the sum received and the disturbance allowance that would have been payable if it had been calculated upon such acting rank.

(B) FREE RATEWAY WARRANTS.

Every officer and man will be entitled to a free railway warrant from the place of his disbandment to his home. In addition to the above, it will be open to any member of the force who considers that he would he in danger if he were to return to or to remain at his home after the date of disbandment, to apply for a free travelling warrant to enable him to remove himself and his family to any place in Great Britain and Ireland. Such warrants will be issuable in respect of the member of the force, his wife and children or other dependant normally supported by him as a member of his household. Where a member of the force is moving his family, and finds it inadvisable actually to accompany them, a separate warrant will be issued for their use.

(c) SEPARATION ALLOWANCE.

Separation allowance will be payable during the first three months after the date of disbandment to any married member of the force whose home is, outside Northern Ireland and who proceeds either to Great Britain or Northern Ireland, leaving his family in Ireland. This allowance will be in addition to any compensation allowance granted under Section one of this Act, and will be made at the rates approved for the several ranks of the force, namely. 14s. a. week for constables and sergeants, 17s. 6d. a week for head constables, and 28s. a week for officers of higher rank.

In this Schedule the expression "date of disbandment" means the date of discharge in the ease of an officer or man to whom compensation is payable under Section one of this Act, and the date fixed for the disbandment of the force in the case of an officer or Mall in receipt of a pension.

Sir H. GREENWOOD: I beg to move, "That this House doth agree with so much of the Lords Amendment as proposes to leave out the Schedule, and to insert a First Schedule."
Their Lordships moved in a new First Schedule, which is in two Parts. I wish to accept their Amendment with regard to the First Schedule, but not to accept the Second and Third Schedules.

Sir JOHN BUTCHER: On a point of Order. I think there is a verbal mistake in paragraph 4 of the first part of this Schedule, which provides for a pension or gratuities to widows and children. The words are:
The Treasury may, if they think fit, grant a pension or gratuities to the widow and children of the officer or constable.
That was all right according to the form in which the Bill was originally drawn. It was contained in Sub-section (1) of Clause 1 of the original Bill. After the Bill was introduced, Sub-section (1) was altered, and instead of leaving it optional or open to the Treasury to grant or not to grant pensions or gratuities to widows and children, it was made compulsory. In line 19 of the Bill which we are considering these words appear:
the Treasury shall grant a pension or gratuities.
inasmuch as the word "shall" was inserted in Sub-section (1) of Clause 1 of the Bill, the word "shall" ought therefore to be put into paragraph 4 of the First Schedule, in place of the word "may." The hon. Member for East Leicester (Mr. Banton) has an Amendment to carry out this alteration. I wish to ask you, Mr. Speaker, when would be the proper time for my hon. Friend to move his Amendment?

Mr. SPEAKER: It would be necessary to agree with the Lords Amendment after the Amendment be made.

Sir J. BUTCHER: Would it be proper to amend it first?

Mr. SPEAKER: We can take the Amendment before the Schedule be agreed to.

Sir H. GREENWOOD: I am quite prepared to accept the Amendment of the hon. Member for East Leicester, which is consequential. In practice it may be more convenient if he move it now.

Mr. SPEAKER: The right hon. Gentleman should first withdraw his Motion to agree with the Lords Amendment.

Sir H. GREENWOOD: I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Motion.

Motion, by leave, withdrawn.

So much of the Lords Amendment as proposes to leave out the Schedule agreed to.

Mr. BANTON: I beg to move, as an Amendment to the Lords Amendment, in the First Schedule, Part I, paragraph 4, to leave out the words "may, if they think fit" ["the Treasury may, if they think fit"], and to insert instead thereof the word "shall."
The alteration of the word "shall" for "may" was originally agreed to by this House.

Mr. SHORT: I beg to second the Amendment.

Sir H. GREENWOOD: I have much pleasure in accepting the Amendment, which is consequential on an Amendment moved by the hon. Member for East Leicester (Mr. Banton) in Committee on this Bill upstairs. It follows Sub-section (1) of Clause 1 of the Bill itself.

Amendment to Lords Amendment agreed to.

So much of the Lords Amendment, as amended, agreed to.

Sir H. GREENWOOD: I beg to move, "That this House doth disagree with so much of the Lords Amendment as proposes to insert a Second Schedule."
This is a Schedule which the Lords wished to incorporate in the Bill. Presumably, the tribunal is the one under Sir Edward Troup, which is now dealing with cases of hardship consequent on the disbandment. of the Royal Irish Constabulary. For reasons I have already given, I move to disagree with the Lords Amendment.

Mr. SPEAKER: This Motion is consequential on that already moved.

Sir H. GREENWOOD: I beg to move, "That this House doth disagree with
so much of the Lords Amendment as proposes to insert a Third Schedule."
We have already covered the ground for bringing into this Bill the terms of disbandment.

Mr. SPEAKER: There is a question of privilege here.

TITLE.

A BILL INTITLED

An Act to make provision for the disbandment of the Royal Irish Constabulary and with respect to magistrates appointed under the Acts relating to that force. and for the validation of things done or omitted in the execution or purported execution of those Acts, and for other purposes incidental thereto.

Lords Amendment: After the word "of" ["disbandment of"], insert "and for other matters relating to."

Mr. SPEAKER: It is not now necessary to amend the Title.

Motion made, and Question, "That this House doth disagree with the Lords in the said Amendment," put, and agreed to.—[Sir H. Greenwood.]

Ordered, That a Committee be appointed to draw up Reasons to be assigned to the Lords for disagreeing to certain of their Amendments to the Bill.

Committee nominated of Sir Hamar Greenwood, Mr. Hilton Young, Mr. Hogge, Mr. J. H. Thomas., and Lien:— Col. Sir John Gilmom.

Three to be the quorum.

To withdraw immediately.—[Sir H. Greenwood.]

Reasons for disagreeing to certain of the Lords Amendments reported later, and agreed to.

To be communicated to the Lords.—[Sir H. Greenwood.]

MILK AND DAIRIES (AMENDMENT) BILL [Lords].

Order read for resuming Adjourned Debate on Question [28th July], "That the Bill be now read the Third time."

Question again proposed,

Mr. T. THOMSON: I do not wish to delay the progress of this Measure, but I
want to ask the Minister of Health a question with regard to the date of its coming into force. Some local authorities feel that there is a little doubt on that point. I am aware that the, first Clause of the Bill provides that it shall not come into force before 1st September, 1925. On the face of it, however, there is nothing that insists that the Bill shall come into force on that date. Section 21 of the Milk and Dairies (Consolidation) Act, 1915, which this Clause repeals, provides that the Act shall then come into force on such a date as the Local Government Board may appoint, not being later than the expiration of one year after the termination of the present War, which is, in fact, the 31st of this month. I understand that the effect of Clause 1 of the present Bill is to repeal part of Section 21 of the Act of 1915, but while it does that by implication it is still left to the Minister of Health to fix the date upon which it shall come into operation. If that interpretation is correct then, as this Bill leaves this House, although it cannot conic into force before 1st September, 1925, it does not follow that it will come into force then. I had an Amendment down on the Report stage which, unfortunately, I was unable to move as the Bill came on earlier than was expected. It is too late now to alter the Bill, but I am very anxious that the Minister in charge of the Bill should give local authorities an assurance that, notwithstanding the wording of the Clause, about which they are in doubt, the Bill will come into force not later than the date specified. The local authorities are disappointed that there is this further delay because, as the House knows, the Act of 1915 amended the Milk and Dairies Act, 1914, which was passed in response to an ancient pledge. Because of that Act the local authorities withdrew private Bills which they had before the House dealing with milk supplies. Of course, that is a question of the past, but the local authorities are anxious that there should be no further delay. If the Minister of Health can give an assurance that, notwithstanding this particular phrasing in the Bill, he will bring it into force at the earliest possible date, then, knowing the sympathetic way in which he deals with the necessities of the health of the country, we shall be very grateful.

Mr. ACLAND: On the Report stage certain manuscript Amendments were inserted. There is no record of them on any of the Proceedings of the House. The Bill has not been reprinted since those Amendments were made, and in the journals of the House it is merely recorded that certain Amendments were made. I do not want to delay the Bill; I desire it to pass this Session. Unless it leaves this House very soon, I imagine it will not do so. It would, however, be right, as manuscript Amendments were made of which we had no record at all, that the Minister of Health should tell us, before the Measure finally leaves our control, whether or not they were of any substance and what points they cover.

Sir EDMUND BARTLEY-DENNISS: Everyone must regret that the Act of 1915 is not to come into force immediately. When it was passed, I went to the Local Government Board, being much interested in the subject, to try to get them to put it into force immediately. Their plea was that the veterinary surgeons were absent in the War and the Clauses for the inspection of dairy cows could not be put into force while they were away. The Local Government Board said they were particularly anxious that the Act should be a success when it came into force, but for that reason it would have to be postponed. Now I understand it is a question of money. We have the veterinary surgeons, but the House is not prepared to spend the money. It seems to me that is false economy. There is nothing more important to my mind than pure milk for the benefit, not only of the children, but of the race itself. To postpone it till 1925 seems to me to be a very retrograde step. The need for inspection of milk cows is as great to-day as it was in 1915, in fact, it is getting greater every day. Under the 1915 Act any cow which had given tuberculosis milk was inspected, and the milk was not allowed to be sold. The medical officer of health for London has reported that at least 8 per cent. of the London milk contains tuberculous matter, and I think it is pretty well common knowledge now that 40 per cent. of the mills cows in this country are, more or less, infected with tuberculosis. Another case under that Act was that in which a cow was suffering from emaciation due to tuberculosis, in which case the milk always contained tubercle
bacilli. The next case was acute inflammation of the udder. That is very frequent in cows, and is often associated with tubercle bacilli. There is nothing whatever in the Act which deals with this case, and our children and grandchildren are to go on, till 1925, drinking this diseased milk. Tuberculosis of the udder is dealt with in the present Bill. But that does not include any of these things I have mentioned. Tuberculosis of the udder is very difficult to be distinguished from suppuration of the udder, which is a very common disease. It is chronic, I understand, and although it does not produce tuberculosis, yet it will give the farmer and those who sell milk an opportunity of getting out of the Bill altogether and making the Clause dealing with tuberculosis of the udder unworkable, because suppuration of the udder includes several diseased conditions and the appearances are very similar to tuberculosis of the udder. Therefore anyone who deals in milk may claim to have been misled by the symptoms, and be able to say he did not knowingly sell tuberculous milk, but thought it was some other disease.
Those are the two weak points of the Bill. The first is that the inspection is delayed until 1925, and there is no proper inspection except in the case of tuberculosis of the udder, and none of these other diseases are made punishable. Milk can be sold from any cow suffering from all these diseases, which are a source of tuberculosis, and I very much regret the Bill in its present form. There is no provision for veterinary inspection in the Bill. Farmers object very much to being inspected by sanitary inspectors, who cannot diagnose the diseases of an animal any more than of the human body, or by medical officers, who may be able to diagnose the diseases of the human body, but not those of animals. I understand the Veterinary Controller of the Ministry of Health gives licences now for grade A certified milk from non-tuberculous cows. In order that that certificate may be given, very elaborate inspection has to be made by veterinary surgeons. There is, first, the tubereuline test. I do not know that that is always advisable. Secondly, there must be the certificate of a veterinary surgeon that the diseases I have mentioned of the udder are not present and that there is no emaciation due
to tuberculosis, that there is not even a chronic cough, and that there are no clinic signs of any kind of tuberculosis. In addition, there is a periodical examination of the herd. Very few people are in a position to buy that milk. If ever there was a case of one law for the rich and another for the poor, we have it here. Those who know about it and can afford it can buy the milk. I should not for one be in position to have milk of that quality. That is the object to be aimed at The 1915 Act would have done it to some extent. This Bill does nothing whatever. I understand there are only 16 herds in the whole country which are licensed. The rest of the people who do not get milk from those 16 herds have to suffer from the effects of these diseases of milk cows which are at present practically entirely uninspected except for tuberculosis of the udder. I call attention to these facts, because I hope the Ministry of Health will see their way before 1st September, 1925, to bring in a short Bill to hasten the action or restore the powers of the 1915 Act and their general strict enforcement for the sake of the little children who, after all., form the new generation which is carry on this country, and will, I hope, be Al instead of C3 citizens.

The MINISTER of HEALTH (Sir Alfred Mond): I do not propose to follow the hon. Member who spoke last into a renewal of the discussion which we had on the Second Reading, but. I cannot agree with him on one point of substance. He says the Clause tit this Bill which makes it an offence to sell milk from a cow having tuberculosis of the udder will be unworkable because the owner of a cow which has suppuration of the udder will be able to say he was not aware that it had tuberculosis of the udder. That defence will not avail him before magistrates, because a farmer who has a cow with a diseased udder will surely be put on notice to find out whether or not he is committing a very serious offence for which there are heavy penalties. The hon. Member for West Middlesbrough (Mr. T. Thomson) asked me a question with regard to the interpretation of Clause 1. I have carefully gone into that with my legal advisers and they are quite satisfied that, as the Bill stands, it will automatically come into operation on the date named unless there is fresh legislation,
and they have no doubt on the subject. If there was any doubt, I should be glad to say that, as far as I can pledge the Ministry, it will not, unless directed by Parliament, by a fresh Bill, do anything to postpone the Act of 1915. The right hon. Gentleman opposite asked me one or two questions on a manuscript Amendment to the Bill, which has not been reprinted. We only put in four Amendments on Report, of which two were on the Paper. There were two which were not on the Paper. One was an Amendment on Clause 8, which was only putting in other words an Amendment which was on the Paper, which enabled me to prescribe a standard of condensed milk, which had not been the case, before. The other was on Clause 12. It was merely the omission of a few words of no very great importance. I hope now the House will allow me to have the Bill, which we are anxious to get into operation.

ALLOTMENTS (SCOTLAND) BILL [Lords].

As amended (in the Standing Committee), considered.

CLAUSE 2.—(Compensation on removing from allotment gardens.)

(1) Where land is let by a local authority, an association, or any other person for use by the tenant as an allotment garden, the tenant shall, subject to the provisions of this Section and notwithstanding any agreement to the contrary, be entitled at the termination of the tenancy, on removing from the land, to recover from the lessor compensation for crops growing upon the land in the ordinary course of the cultivation of the land as an allotment garden, and for manure applied to the land since the taking of the last crop therefrom in anticipation of a future crop, such compensation to be based on the value of the growing crops and manure to an incoming tenant.

The SECRETARY for SCOTLAND (Mr. Munro): I beg to move, in Sub-section (1), to leave out the words "since the taking of the last crop therefrom in anticipation of a future crop."
This Amendment arises in consequence of what happened in Committee. Certain words were added to the Sub-section
which seemed to render not only unnecessary but even undesirable the words which I am proposing to move out. The Sub-section deals with the compensation which the allotment gardener is in certain circumstances to receive—compensation, in this case, for growing crops and for manure. It is now provided that the compensation is to be based on the value of the crops and manure to an incoming tenant. That being so, it is no longer necessary to inquire when the manure was applied or with what motive. Exhausted value is excluded now: and residual value alone is reckoned. The difference is really trifling, hut it seems better to leave out those words, firstly, because their omission will, I think, facilitate the operations of the arbitrator, and, secondly, because the allotment garden holder's compensation will then be the same in Scotland as it is in England.

Amendment agreed to.

CLAUSE 5.—(Restriction on tenancy of allotment gardens.)

One person shall not hold more than one allotment garden provided by a local authority and an allotment garden so provided shall not be sub-let.

Mr. MUNRO: I beg to move, at the beginning of the Clause, to insert the words
A local authority may let to one person two or more allotment gardens if then-aggregate extent does not exceed forty poles, but save as aforesaid.
This Amendment is proposed in accordance with an undertaking I gave in Committee. My hon. and gallant Friend for Central. Aberdeen (Major M. Wood) drew attention to the fact, that. while it was quite desirable, as I put it to the Committee, that we should proceed on the principle of one man one allotment, nevertheless there might be cases where very small portions of ground were given to an allotment holder and where, assuming that the sum total was under tie statutory figure of 40 poles in extent, it would be undesirable by legislation to prevent an allotment holder from having those small pieces of land if he desired it, and the authorities thought he should have them. This Amendment has been put down to meet that difficulty.

Captain BENN: I took an interest in this question in the Committee as well as
my hon. and gallant Friend, and I desire to thank my right hon. Friend for putting in this Amendment, which deals with a small matter but may obviate the difficulty and hardship which might otherwise occur.

Amendment agreed to.

CLAUSE 14.—(Powers of entry on unoccupied land.)

(1) A town council may, after giving such notice of intention to enter as is hereinafter provided—

Mr. MUNRO: I beg to move, in Subsection (1), after the word "council" ["a town council may"], to insert the words "or parish council."
This Amendment was withdrawn in Committee on an undertaking being given that the matter should be considered before Report. It is not an Amendment of prime importance, because the cases with which it deals are admittedly few, but it seems desirable that, if there should be land suitable for the purpose, parish councils should enjoy the same rights of entry upon it which the Bill proposes to confer upon town councils. On consideration of the whole matter, I see no reason to differentiate between these two bodies. The Committee seemed to desire that the Amendment should be made, and I have given effect to their desire.

Amendment agreed to.

Mr. MUNRO: I desire to read the following statement:
I have it in Commission from His Majesty to signify to the House that His Majesty having been informed of the purpose of the Allotments (Scotland) Bill gives His consent as far as His Majesty's interests are concerned, and the House may do therein as it may think fit.
Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Bill be now read the Third time.

Mr. HOGGE: Before the Bill be read the Third time, I should like to raise one question. My right hon. Friend will remember that the Bill was read a Second time on a Friday, and the work has been done in Committee upstairs. There is one point, on Clause 3 which is important from the point of view of my constituency and one or two other constituencies in Edinburgh, which arises out of a position that occurred during the War, My right
hon. Friend will remember that parts of the Royal Park in Edinburgh were taken for allotment purposes when it was necessary to grow greater supplies of food. There was a question as to how long these allotments should obtain as a result of peace. It is, perhaps, undesirable to hand over large areas of a Royal Park for the purpose of allotments, but in a park of the size of the Royal Park at Holyrood there is ample room for allotments. These allotments almost adjoin the houses which surround the park, and do not interfere in any way with the purposes for which the park should be used. Several questions have been put to the hon. Member for the Pollok Division (Sir J. Gilmour), representing the First Commissioner of Works, and an arrangement was made by which a limit of time was put on a Large number of these allotments. As these provisions in Clauses 1 and 2 do not apply to Crown land, and the allotments on Crown land came in a new category, I should be obliged to my right hen. Friend if he could make a statement of policy in regard to these allotments in the Royal Park. All I am asking is that there should only be such allotments permitted as do not interfere with the amenities of the park, or the other purposes for which the park is used. Subject, to these two conditions, would it not be possible, as well as desirable, that in these large parks that amount of land should be given for allotments. The utility of allotments during the War is well known, and the pleasure they have given to the people concerned is also well known, and it would be a pity if they were scrapped as a result of any idea of keeping the park purely and simply for the purposes of sport and recreation.

Mr. MUNRO: I desire to acknowledge the fairness with which this Bill has been treated by my colleagues from Scotland, and by the House. It is a non-contentious Measure, and the time spent upon it has not been undue. I quite agree as to the utility of the allotments in the Royal parks, and so convinced was I of their utility that I made representations to the, First Commissioner on two separate occasions asking if he could see his way to extend the time during which the allotment holders might continue their tenure. He was good enough to agree to both extensions, but the last extension was the furthest length to which he could go, and
it would not be fair to press him further. These parks are dedicated by statute to public uses, and it required the intervention of regulations made under the Defence of the Realm Act to divert them from the statutory uses to which they were dedicated, and to permit of their use for allotments. At the end of the second extension I am afraid that we have no option but to allow these parks to revert to their statutory uses. If I remember rightly, arid my right hon. and learned Friend the Lord Advocate (Mr. C. D. Murray) confirms me, the second extension which has been granted will not expire until next February. I hope that my hon. Friend and the allotment holders who are interested in this matter will think that they have been fairly treated, and that the Government in dealing with them have gone as far as it is possible to go in the direction of assisting them.

Captain SENN: I should like to thank the Secretary for Scotland for the manner in which he has conducted this Bill, which marks a very important step forward in the encouragement which is given to allotment holders. There was one little disappointment. We hoped that travelling facilities would have been provided. That is opposed by some people; but it has to be borne in mind that sometimes it is impossible to provide allotments in any central spot, and it might have been a means of making available for this useful purpose land which otherwise and now will not be used for that purpose. Although that particular Amendment was not divided on in the Committee—

Mr. MUNRO: My hon. and gallant. Friend will forgive me for interrupting. My recollection is quite clear that there was a Division on the Amendment. My hon. Friend the Member for Lanark (Mr. R. Maclaren), speaking on behalf of the allotment holders, told the Committee that they did not ask for this privilege, and when the Amendment went to a Division the only person who voted for it, was the right hon. Member for West. Fife (Mr. Adamson). My hon. and gallant Friend voted against it.

Captain BENN: That is perfectly true.

Sir H. CRAIK: It was defeated by 20 to 1.

Captain BENN: Yes, I voted against it.

Sir H. CRAIK: You were not there.

Captain BENN: I was there, and I voted against it. If the right hon. Gentleman will consult the OFFICIAL REPORT or the Standing Committee, he will find that that is so, I attended the Committee throughout the consideration of the Bill.

Sir H. CRAIK: And you voted against it?

Captain HENN: Yes. The reason was that the Secretary for Scotland informed us that the local authorities already had these powers, if they wished to use them. I hope the Debate will be sufficient to draw the attention of the local authorities to these powers, so that they may exercise them if it appear desirable. It was on these grounds that I voted against the Amendment, because I hoped that the existing powers would be suitably exercised. On behalf of those associated with me, I desire to thank the Secretary for Scotland for the courtesy and ability with which he has met the case of the allotment holders.

SOLICITORS BILL [Lords].

As amended (in the Standing Committee), considered; read the Third time, and passed, with Amendments.

ESTIMATES COMMITTEE (REPORTS).

Sir F. BANBURY: I beg to move,
That the Report of the Select Committee on Estimates, be now considered.
I desire, as Chairman of the Estimates Committee, to thank the Government for having given facilities for a short discussion on the five Reports which we have submitted to the House during the present Session. The House will understand that the powers of the Committee are limited to a very considerable extent. The Committee cannot deal with questions of policy. I do not make this statement because I disagree with the limitations of the powers of the Committee. I have always held that it would be very difficult to give powers to any Committee of this
House to deal with questions of policy, inasmuch as it would take away the responsibility of the Government on a matter which concerns them. I desire to point out that, owing to the limited amount of our powers, we can only deal with the Estimates that come before us and make statements as to whether or not they are in proper form, and also to put before the House the results of our investigation. A recommendation was made four or five years ago by the Select Committee on National Expenditure, when Sir Herbert Samuel was chairman, to the effect that some of the reports of the Estimates Committee should be submitted to the House before the Estimates were considered in Committee. I made very considerable efforts with the Leaders of the Opposition to ensure that the Estimates, or some of them, should be taken after our Report had been circulated. I was met with very considerable courtesy by the Leaders in question, but owing to a variety of circumstances, it was found impossible to arrive at an arrangement. I trust that next. Session, if the Committee is re-appointed, that we shall be able to make some arrangement by which the Estimates which we are going to consider will not be taken until our Report is before the Committee.
We have presented five Reports, and I intended to take first the second Report, which deals with education, but I understood that the President of the Board of Education wished to fulfil an engagement which he had entered into before he knew that these Reports were going to be considered. I see the Parliamentary Secretary in his place, and I gather from that that the right hon. Gentleman is not going to attend.

The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the BOARD of EDUCATION (Mr. Herbert Lewis): My right hon. Friend will be here later.

Sir F. BANBURY: The Report, which deals with the Board of Education, states that the higher staff consists of 99 officials, whose salaries, including bonus, amount to £101,459, as compared with the same number of officials in 1913–14, with salaries of £62,972. In regard to that I should like to say, and I believe I am speaking for the majority of the Committee, that we thought that, undoubtedly, in the lower grades, some rise
in salary should have taken place owing to the increased cost of living, but that when it came to the higher grades, people receiving from £1,500 to £2,000, or from £1,200 to £1,500 a year, there was not. the same necessity for increasing their salaries as there was for increasing the salaries of people with only a few pounds a week. There are an enormous number of people in this country, people with fixed incomes, people with small businesses, people whose business has been adversely affected by the War, who have had to bear the whole increase in taxation, and the whole of the increase in the cost of living, without any increase in their income, and it seems to me, and I think I am speaking for the majority of the Committee, that in regard to the higher-paid officials it would have been perfectly easy to make a very much smaller addition to their salaries than has been made. We go on to say;
Other Grades consisted in 1913–14 of 160 persons with a. salary of £11,535, as against 160 persons to-day with a salary, including bonus, of £25,492. Sir Amherst Selby-Bigge informed the Committee that, in his opinion. the numbers of the higher staff of the Department should be susceptible of reduction, and that the Board look to make a saving in the number of higher posts, and your Committee hope that this reduction will be carried out as quickly as possible. With regard to the executive and clerical staff of this Department, the same witness informed your Committee that, in his opinion, the increase in numbers was necessary, and he gave as a reason for this that the whole work of the Teachers Superannuation Act, which is very large and very meticulous work indeed. had been thrown upon that staff. 1st Division.
The witness explained that the Regulations as to hours and overtime were not laid down by this Department, but by the Treasury. We have later on in this Report various important statements as to the hours of labour existing at present in various Government offices. and therefore I will not deal with that. at present. The question of bonus arose, and the witness was asked whether the work of the administrative Department could be carried on if the whole of the bonus was done away with, and the Committee was informed that if the bonus was abolished through all Departments of the Civil Service, there might be some resignations, but the Department, out of loyalty to the country, would continue their work, though possibly there might be considerable dissatisfaction. Of course, there
always is dissatisfaction on the part of people whose salaries are reduced. I felt considerable dissatisfaction when, owing to the very large increases in taxation, and perhaps some unfortunate investments, my income was considerably reduced. That is an experience which we all have, but civil servants, who have an assured position and not too much to do, ought not to be dissatisfied if some reduction is made in their salary. Coming to the question of the women inspectors, we say:
The staff of women inspectors has been increased by nine since last year and their salaries have been increased in the same period to £25,765.
When a salary is raised, even if it is only by a. small amount, what follows is that everybody in the Department says, "Because so-and-so's salary has been raised mine should be raised," and that goes on in the whole of the Service. Those points, though they seem to be small, are, in the total result, of considerable importance. We also say:
The staff of women inspectors has been increased by nine since last year, and their salaries have been increased in the same period from £25,911 to £29,765. The chief woman inspector receives a salary of £925" rising to £1,000, in addition to which she receives a bonus of approximately £300. These inspectors are selected by a Selection Committee and are not examined, your Committee being informed that they were chosen from women beyond the usual examination age. It would appear that with one or two exceptions, in private schools, such as the head mistress of Cheltenham, these salaries are much in advance of the general run of salaries received by women in the educational world. The women staff inspectors are now paid, including the bonus, about £900. a year, that is to say, a bonus of £250 is added to the maximum salary. In the opinion of your Committee, these salaries could he reduced without inuring the work. In 1913–14 the salary of the chief woman inspector was £650. and the women inspectors received £200, rising by £15 to £400.
There are also two inspectors of music: one with a salary of £1,150 a year, un-pensionable, and another, pensionable, with a salary rising to £900 a year. It cannot, be said that anybody is going to be made a better citizen because he has been taught music.
The chief medical officer is in receipt of a salary of £2,500 a year, partly borne on the Education Vote and partly on that of the Ministry of Health, being an increase of £400 a year from the salary paid last year. There does not appear to your Committee any justification for the increase of salary.
Is this a time to increase by £400 a year the salary of any man who has been receiving £2,100 a year?
Salaries account for the greater part of the cost of education. In 1913–14 the salaries paid in public elementary schools amounted to £16,415,827, and the number of teachers employed was 163,640. In 1921 the amount paid in salaries was £38,885,000, and the number of teachers 167,205.
While the number of teachers has increased by fewer than 4,000, the salaries have increased from £16,000,000 to nearly £39,000,000. To increase expenditure on education may have been a good thing when the country was prosperous and Income Tax was a shilling in the pound, but it is not a good thing when Income Tax is five shillings in the pound, and we have Super-tax and all the other taxes. The total cost of elementary schools in 1913–14 was £16,563,742, and the number of teachers was 164,868. The total salaries in 1921 were £39,335,060, and the number of teachers 168,758. Then there was an additional sum spent on technical and training college.
A Paper was also put in by the Board showing the cost per unit of average attendance in public elementary schools for the salaries of teachers. In 1913–14 it amounted to 60s. 10d. per annum per head, in 1919–20 to 120s. 10d, in 1920–21 to 151s. 10d., in 1921–22 to 162s., and in 1922–23 it is estimated to cost 166s. 10d. while the average attendance has decreased from 5,397,450 in 1913–14 to 5,250,000 in 1921–22, and it is estimated that this will be the average attendance in the present year.
So we have the fact that while the average attendance of children has decreased from 5,397,450 in 1913–14 to 5,250,000 in 1920–21, there is this great increase in cost. I have to thank all the officials of the Board of Education who attended before us for the way in which they gave every information.
The President of the Board attended before your Committee and referred to the vast increase in teachers' salaries, which are now 70 per cent. of the total cast of education, and stated that if there is to he an improved system of education there must be better qualified teachers. To obtain these, better inducements must be offered. He did not hold out any hope of a reduction in expenditure under existing conditions.
So much for expenditure on education. Now let me deal with the Ministry of Labour, which is another extravagant Department. The gross expenditure of the Ministry for the year 1922–23 is estimated to amount to£18,479,777.
Before the War we had no Ministry of Labour, and therefore this Estimate did not exist, with the exception of the amount which was due to the Departments of the Board of Trade, which dealt with these questions at a. cost of about £500,000. It must not be forgotten, however, that the actual expenditure of the Department will be about £23,000,000, of which no less than £4,340,560 goes in salaries and administration. It may be said that this Ministry deals with unemployment insurance and a variety of other things, but what would Mr. Gladstone say to the amount of £4,300,000 for salaries? I believe that the Minister of Labour is a devoted follower of his. I was in this House with Mr. Gladstone, and I can understand what his horror would have been if anybody had said that a Department like this was going to cost £4,340,000. At that time the total expenditure of the whole country was only about £90,000,000, and Mr. Gladstone said that if it ever went to £100,000,000, including the Army and Navy, we should be on the verge of ruin. A statement was put in showing that the Employment. Department of the Board of Trade in 1913–14 cost £541,364 gross for administration, as against £4,610,875 for the Ministry of Labour this year.
8.0. P.M.
The Ministry of Labour, however, administers certain services which the Employment Department of the Board of Trade did not administer, such as the Trade Boards Act, the Conciliation Act of 1896, the Industrial Courts Act, the collection and publication of labour statistics—I do not think they are of any use—the professional training of ex-service men, the industrial training of ex-service men, the interrupted apprentice ship scheme for ex-service men, re-settlement grants for ex-service men, and so forth. The number of persons insured under the Unemployment Insurance Act has risen from 2,750,000 in 1913–14 to 12,000,000 at the present time. Unemployment benefit, including dependents' grants, for 1921–22 is 267,000,000, compared with £530,000 in 1913–14. The amount for the present year is not yet available. The salary of the Minister is £2,000 a year, and that of the Permanent Secretary, £2,200, both inclusive. These are the highest salaries paid, with two exceptions, namely, the Chief Labour
Adviser, whose salary is now £3,000 a year inclusive, and the President of the Industrial Court, who also receives £3,000 a year inclusive. I do not know why these officials should receive 50 per cent more than the Minister of Labour.
There is a salary mentioned here which I cannot think can be justified. I am certain that the same work could be performed for very much less. It is the salary of the Chief Labour Adviser. He was appointed in 1910 as Labour Adviser to the Home Office at a salary of 2500 a year, rising to £700. In 1912 he was appointed unestablished Commissioner, under the National Health Insurance Commission, at a salary of £1,000. In December, 1916, he was appointed Permanent Secretary to the newly created Ministry of Labour at a salary of £1,500 a year. That is a fairly good increase in six years. He had a bonus of £300 a year in addition, from 1st April, 1919, and this bonus was increased to £500 on 17th November, 1919. The Report goes on:
In the year 1919 an attempt was made to combine the duties of Permanent Secretary with those of the Chief industrial Commissioner, and the salary was raised to £2,000 a year, plus bonus. It is stated that experience proved that, with the great increase in the volume of business, the work could not he done effectively by one officer, and, therefore, the work of the Chief Industrial Commissioner was separated from the work of the Permanent Secretary. A Permanent Secretary was thereupon appointed and the position of Chief Labour Adviser created.
Therefore, you have two people to do what one man was doing before—
The gentleman who had been doing the work which could now be done by two officials at the salary above mentioned, was transferred to the new post of Chief Labour Adviser, and, though his duties were diminished, he was appointed at a salary of £2,000 a year, plus £750 bonus. Subsequently his salary was raised to £3,000, plus £500 bonus.
We see, therefore, that he was appointed in 1910 at £500 a year, and in 1919, or a little later, his salary had risen to £3,500 a. year. That is exactly seven times the salary that he received about seven years ago—
Bonus ceased to be paid as from 1st September, 1921. The reason given for this last increase was that the Committee set up to advise on the emoluments attached to the principal posts in the first-class Departments of the Civil Service recommended that certain posts should he
regarded as carrying this higher salary of £3,000 a year.
That brings me to the question of what the Committee considered to be a very unfortunate practice at the Treasury, namely, that a post is created, and that it does not matter whether the work of that. post in the various Departments differs. We will call the post X. Everybody who is in a post called X, whatever the Department, has to get the same salary. The only justification for giving this gentleman £3,000 a year was that the Civil Service recommended that certain posts should be regarded as carrying this higher salary of £3,000. What does this gentleman do? He advises the Minister of Labour on labour matters. I do not know that the Department has been very successful in labour matters. I do not know what the trade unions think of it. Why, if the right hon. Gentleman is the most competent person to deal with these matters, should he have a person to advise him?

Sir E. BARTLEY-DENNISS: The adviser is a Labour man.

Sir F. BANBURY: Is not the Minister of Labour a laborious person? The Estimates Committee came to the conclusion that a gentleman competent to advise on labour matters might be obtained for a smaller salary than £3,000 a year. The most prominent Labour leaders that I know, the heads of the trade unions, do not get £3,000 a year with a pension. If I were in the position of the Minister I think I could do a deal with some Labour Members of this House for a considerably less sum than £3,000 a year. The only other post carrying a salary of £3,000 a year is that of the President. of the Industrial Court. A county court judge gets only £1,500 a year. The President of the Industrial Court has not a great deal to do. In 1921, 107 cases were dealt with by the Court. Practically all these cases were heard by the whole-time members of the Court. Generally one day was sufficient to take evidence in a case, but this was sometimes exceeded. In 1920 there were 534 cases heard, and the services of additional members paid by fees were utilised to a considerable extent. The personnel of the Court is also used in cases other than those referred specifically to the Court under the Industrial Courts Act.
The President of the Court acts as Chairman of the National Wages Board under the Railways Act of 1921. I do not think he has been called upon to adjudicate. The Estimates Committee consider that a salary of £1,500 a year paid to a county court judge would be sufficient for this post. In addition to the President. there is a Chairman at £1,500 a year, an employers' representative at £1,500, and two workmen's representatives, one at £1,250, and one at £1,000. Why should not Labour have one representative instead of two, and so save the salary of one post? There are other things in the Report on the Ministry of Labour which I propose to leave to be dealt with by other hon. Members.
I come to the Post Office. I am glad that the Postmaster-General is here, because the Post Office is one of the most liberally-conducted Departments that the Committee had the misfortune to come across. The Report states:
From a paper put in by the Post Office it would appear that in 1913–14 the salaries in the metropolitan area amounted to £4,606,288; in 1921–22 they had risen to £13,266,146; and in this year's Estimates they are taken at £11,172,010.
No wonder we had to pay 2d. for our letters, and could not get a Sunday delivery. The total salaries paid by the Post Office in 1913–14, apart from the engineering establishment, amounted to £14,785,433: in 1921–22 they had risen to £42,510,723, and for 1922–23 they are estimated to amount to £35,348,399. In the engineering department the salaries in 1913–14 amounted to 1½ millions; in 1921–22 they had risen to £5,200,000, and for the year 1922–23 they are estimated to be £3,674,880. It was stated that the figures for 1921–22 were approximate. The total staff employed on 1st August, 1914, was 229,489, and on 1st April, 1922, it was 225,835; so that the number of persons employed was less in 1922 than in 1914, though the salaries have increased from £14,000,000 to £35,000,000. It was further stated that of the staff of 225,835, 4,203 were employed on new work. The Post Office put in a statement of the work done in 1913–14 and in 1921–22. It is all in the Report and it makes very interesting reading. The business of the Post Office in 1921–22 showed a reduction all round with the exception of registered letters and parcels, and in telephones an increase in trunk calls, but a decrease in local calls.
As regards the extent to which salaries have been raised, the Estimates Committee were informed that in inner London a boy of 18 entering the service as a postman began at 45s. a week, including bonus at the present scale, and rose to 92s. a week, including bonus. The hours of work are 48 per week, and from these hours time is allowed for meals, so that practically the time worked is 45 hours a week. Postmen are paid overtime at the rate of time and a quarter. They receive uniform free, and free medical service. In 1913–14 in inner London a boy of 18 began as a postman at 19s. a week, and rose to 43s. That means that a boy of is now gets more than a mature postman received in 1913–14. Porters at entry are paid, including bonus, 56s. a week at 22 years or over. Cleaners who clean the headquarter buildings, wash the windows, etc., have a foreman who gets with bonus a salary of about £300 a year.
I find that there are also one housekeeper, five assistant housekeepers, and one cook at the Post Office buildings, and it would seem to me that that is a very large proportion of housekeepers. There are also sorter tracers who sort the telegraph forms so as to secure that for every telegram the necessary revenue is collected, and they are paid £5 10s. per week, or £275 a year. They receive this salary for sorting over telegrams to see that the correct stamps have been put upon them. A witness was asked whether women could not do that work, and he replied that the work was going to be transferred to women. Free medical ser vice is given to all employés up to £270 a year, and that, including health insurance, amounts to £144,316 in the year. Girls are taken on as probationers at 14½ years of age at 14s. a week, and when they are 16 years of age, if there are any vacancies, they are taken on to be trained as telephonists at 36s. a week, while they are, in fact, still being instructed. That means 36s. a week is being paid to a girl of 16 who is being taught. Many persons learning a trade or business are only paid a nominal salary, and perhaps have to contribute something themselves.
I should like to allude to the building operations which it is proposed to carry out at the Post Office in Threadneedle Street. It is proposed to spend £89,000 on the Post Office there. The Committee visited the Post Office and went all over
it. It is a fine, substantial building of stone, but does not stand on a very large site, and it is quite impossible to extend the site. It is very dirty inside and a little paint and whitewash would go a long way to improve it. There are undoubtedly on the top floors arrangements which are not sanitary. There is a sort of restaurant upstairs and meals are cooked there, and the lavatories and the kitchens are on the floor together. I think that undoubtedly is not as it should he, hut whether it is worth while spending £89,000 in order that the people employed in that particular office should have their meals inside instead of going out for them, is quite another matter. In every other institution in the City, the clerks have to go outside and are not provided with meals inside. That certainly was so in my time. Even if this were necessary, it would be perfectly easy to provide the additional accommodation at a much smaller cost. The Committee was informed that as it was impossible to extend the site of the building it was proposed to increase the height, and it was also proposed to let off a portion of the additional storey to the adjoining insurance company. It seems to us that in these days of financial stringency it is hardly the business of the Post Office to enter into business speculations and to offer buildings to let. Your Committee did not think it was advisable to spend a capital sum of money to obtain a rental of 5 per cent., and they came to the conclusion that the additional accommodation could be provided at a cost very much less than £89,000. The Report states:
The Committee have come to this conclusion with one dissentient. They are of opinion that a. slim of money should be spent upon improvements in the building but they are not of the opinion that Anything approaching the sum of £89,000 is necessary and they would suggest that an alternative proposal at a cost not to exceed £20,000 should be obtained.
An extremely pleasant and agreeable Post Office servant showed us over the building. His zeal for the Post Office was beyond all praise, and his idea seemed to be that this should be a beautiful building. He said there were certain telegraph companies which had much nicer buildings, and he thought he would get more business if he had a better place in which people could hand in their telegrams. I think myself in the City the general practice is for the office boy to take the telegrams, and the em-
ployer does not care twopence whether the office boy has a nice place to hand them in at or whether he has not. We now come to the Fourth Report, which deals with the Inland Revenue. The cost of the Department has risen from £784,633 in 1914–15 to £4,651,406 in 1922–3. The reasons which one witness gave for the great increase in the work of this Department from 1914 were that when taxation has to be raised at enormous rates, it becomes of primary importance to the State that the taxes should be collected with far greater equality than was ever aimed at before the War, and this task is rendered the more difficult because the incentive to the less scrupulous part of the community to conceal its liability, or, at any rate, to await discovery rather than to reveal liability, has enormously increased. I think that is one of the many disadvantages of the enormous burden of taxation under which we are suffering. Your Committee wind up by saying that they are of opinion that while reductions in the salaries paid should be made, the work of the Department is efficiently carried out.
I come to the last Report. The Fifth Report begins by saying that the Committee found, during the examination of several witnesses, that when inquiries were made as to the reason for increases in salaries and wages, the answer invariably given was that these were made in consequence of Treasury Regulations, and the Departments in question had nothing to do with the fixing of the rate of salaries or wages. We, therefore, asked representatives of the Inland Revenue to attend before us, and they put in the Report of the Civil Service National Whitley Council, dated 17th February, 1920, which recommended that the hours of writing assistants should be seven per day with a half-holiday on Saturdays except when the state of business renders this impracticable; that the luncheon interval should consist of three-quarters of an hour, but that it should be within the discretion of heads of Departments to allow one hour in special cases of difficulty, and that payment for overtime should be made when the hours of attendance exceeded 42 in any one week. The same recommendations were made in the case of the clerical and administrative classes, these, with the writing assistants, being the three main classes into which the Civil Service is
divided. These recommendations mean that civil servants attend at 10 o'clock in the morning, have three-quarters of an hour for luncheon, and leave at 5 o'clock, with the exception of Saturday, when they leave at half-past one, and overtime is paid when the attendance is in excess of 42 hours a week. This arrangement, as far as regards London, means that the hours of work during week do not exceed 34¾ hours. These gentlemen, besides receiving very fair salaries, have a permanent berth. They are not like servants in a private firm, where the masters may perhaps decide to retire; or where they may have to enter the Bankruptcy Court and the employés are cast on the world; but these civil servants have fixity of tenure, and in addition a pension. The Report goes on:
The witness stated that the Treasury had adopted these recommendations. He stated further that in the provinces the Treasury were arranging for an 8-hour clay instead of a 7-hour day for the clerical classes. Asked whether the 8-hour day in the provinces had yet come into force, he replied that it was coming into force by degrees; it is to some extent in force and is being enforced as the normal arrangement for the provinces.' In addition to this. it would also appear that thestaff are allowed holidays varying from three weeks to eight weeks according to the various grades.…Your Committee are of opinion that the hours of attendance are too short and compare unfavourably with the hours of attendance of clerks in civil employment, while the average holiday in similar employment does not appear to be more than two or three weeks, as against three weeks to eight weeks in the Civil Service. It is clear that if the hours of work were increased to a moderate extent, it would be possible to reduce the staff and so effect a reduction in the cost of the Civil Service.
I have had a paper which was sent to me, as well as to other Members of the Committee, I suppose, from the civil servants, in which they say that at the present moment there are 900 more people employed than are required. I do not know whether that is true. We did not get any evidence on that point before our Committee, but this is a circular which I have had sent to me:
Civil Service Clerical Association, 36, St. George's Road, Victoria, 25th July, 1922,—The administrative and executive classes are at present over-staffed; that is to say, there are more persons receiving the scale of these classes than there is work to occupy them. In the case of the executive class, the redundancy is estimated at 900, and will take a period of years to wipe out. Any further appointments to this class would be an unjustifiable waste of public money.
This is signed by a gentleman called W. J. Brown. I do not know whether his statements are correct, but, if they are, they throw a very considerable light on the short hours which are worked. I ought to observe that the administrative clerks do not receive overtime, but work as long as is required, but the other classes receive overtime if they work more than 42 hours in a week, and the overtime runs up in some cases to double pay. Your Committee wind up by saying:
In conclusion, your Committee cannot think that 34¾ hours, or 33½ hours if an hour is allowed for luncheon, should be considered to constitute a fair week's work in the Civil Service in London; and they are also of opinion that the practice of overtime payable to clerical staffs is uneconomical, is liable to abuse, and should be greatly restricted, if not abolished.
I trust I have not kept the House too long, but in these days of financial stringency it is more than ever necessary to criticise these Estimates.

Sir DONALD MACLEAN: I am quite certain that the thanks of the House are due to my right hon. Friend the Member for the City of London (Sir F. Banbury) and his colleagues for the great industry and ability which they have brought to bear in the production of these Reports on the Estimates. The pity of it is, of course. that these Reports are presented after Supply is concluded, so that their interest is of quite a post mortem character, but we are very much indebted to the hon. Members for the very laborious task which they have undertaken. I only hope that next year the fruits of their labours will be apparent alongside the consideration of the Estimates on the Floor of the House. That seems rather a pious aspiration, but even with a Coalition Government in power, sometimes a modicum of the most modest hopes may come within the prospect of realisation. I do not intend to follow my right hon. Friend in going through the Reports, but while he has been speaking I have been collating one or two figures from the Reports which are in our hands, and I have risen now because it might be more convenient to the Ministers to whose Departments I shall make brief references, that they should, if they think it worth while, reply to me as well as to my right hon. Friend.
The first Report deals with the Labour Ministry, and it is a very large if not
staggering figure with which the public is confronted. It is perfectly true, and the very greatest allowance must be made for it, that I think there is no real comparison between the work of the Board of Trade and the Labour Ministry at the present moment. We may make a comparison, but the difference in the duties is so great as to bring it outside the range of comparing Like with like, because, after all, you have here the following services which the Employment Department of the Board of Trade did not include, namely, the Trade Boards, the Conciliation Act, the Industrial Courts Act, the collection and publication of labour statistics, the National Roll for the Disabled, professional training for ex-service men, industrial training for ex-service men, interrupted apprenticeship scheme for ex-service men, and resettlement grants for ex-service men. It must be noted that, with regard to the last four of those items, the need for the work of the Labour Ministry will diminish as time goes on, but making every kind of allowance. and admitting that in a certain sense you are not really comparing like with like, I do think that when we find we have to pay no less a sum than £4,340,560 in salaries and administration, it raises the gravest possible doubts, and indeed, putting it conversely, makes it almost amount to a certainty that there is room for drastic economies in this Ministry.
Let me take another item which caught my eye as I hastily looked through the Paper. No less a sum than £169,000 goes in travelling expenses. I admit—again, I want to be as fair as I can—that the Labour Ministry is widespread in its activities, and, of course, there must be a large amount of personal communication between the country and the centre, but I really do think that such an item as that raises once more the question as to whether there is not room, not for mere economy, but for a Drastic revision of the charges which fall upon the public Exchequer for travelling expenses. Much use is made of the telegraph, the telephone, and postal services, but I speak with a little personal knowledge when I say—not about this Ministry specially, although this Ministry is inclAded—that I am certain there are a very large number of totally unnecessary visits paid to London by officials operating in the country within
the ambit of these great administrative services which could well be dispensed with, and also, vice versa, visits from London to the country. I pass from that with a comment on what my right hon. Friend has said with regard to the Chief Labour Adviser. In the person of Sir David Shackleton, we have a public official of the very highest standing. I, and many other Members of this House, have had the privilege of his friendship for many years, but, at the same time, I do think that, great as are his attainments, wide as are his public services, I hope that full effect will be given to the note that this salary paid must be regarded as a salary special and peculiar to the present holder of the office.
I pass from that to a comment on the Second Report, which deals with the Education Estimates, and here may I say what a pleasure it is to anyone speaking from the Front Opposition Bench to see such a, 'splendid array of Ministers? I see them here individually very frequently, but. I now have an opportunity of a collective conspectus of members of the Ministry, which tempts me to make a very much longer speech than that in which I otherwise would indulge. However, I refrain from the temptation with all the strength I possess, lest it should overcome me at a later stage of my remarks. With regard to this Report on the Education Estimates, I do not propose to go into it in any detail, but only to make this one general observation, that I am certain that in the Education Department, as in other Departments, there is still much room for revision, reduction and economy. It has just occurred to my recollection—I hope it is correct—that in answer to a question the other day, the reply was given that at least two of the posts are regarded as redundant, and there is a reduction, therefore, in the headquarters' staff. I am sure the President of the Board of Education realises that those of us who oppose wild and sweeping reductions in the, educational services of the country, as I do, believing it is no real economy at all, at the same time we are very anxious indeed that the point of view which we take should be supported and strengthened by every possible economy in the administration of that great and most useful Department. I am certain
that there is room for many economies still to be made.
Dealing with the Post Office Estimates, I admit that I am faced with a somewhat difficult figure on page 2, namely, that there were fewer people employed in the Post Office on the 1st April of this year than there were on the 1st August, 1914. There cannot be a very serious diminution in the services rendered, because there are many extra duties carried by the Post Office in 1922 to what there were in 1914. I think that position compares favourably with some other Departments of His Majesty's Government. I have no doubt at all that the criticism which was passed by my right hon. Friend the Member for the City of London with regard to new buildings is thoroughly justifiable. The mania of Government Departments for spending money on new buildings received a very salutary check last year or the year before last, and since then there has been some reduction. It just shows how necessary it is for the House of Commons to reassert its control over Departments, and here I believe that, in all probability, the Members of this Committee have rendered a very useful service by their recommendations, founded on evidence, because they took the trouble not to pass mere personal opinion. They as men of experience made an investigation, and they came to the conclusion that there was not any necessity this year to incur an expenditure of more than £20,000 compared with the £80,000 or £90,000 last year. If there be substance in that, as I believe there must be, it is a very severe criticism of the proposals of the Post Office with regard to expenditure on new buildings.
There is a very interesting paragraph on page 5 of the same Report and it brings in other Departments as well. It states there:
The various Government Departments that are debited with the sum of £492,655 for telephone services, and a sum of £4,244,730 for postal services. The Ministry of Labour is debited with £471,150 for postal services, and £62,000 for telephone services.
That is to say, this money has been spent. As the House will remember, on the Debate on expenditure, there was also the sum of £169,000 for travelling expenses. What I suggest is that the Government Departments should remember, just as the members of a business
undertaking are constantly reminded, the fact that postal and telephone services cost money. In a business department a record is kept of these, as at the end of the quarter a cheque has to be drawn, so the Government Departments should have the same idea that every time they make unnecessary telephone calls, or send unnecessary telegrams or letters—and heaven knows the whole country is buried beneath a shower of unnecessary Governmental forms—every time they do that it is a cost to the Exchequer. The War Office is debited with £105,000 for telephone services, and the Admiralty with £82,000. The amount debited for postal services to the War Office is £229,900, and to the Admiralty £143,400. This is a most useful paragraph. If it were the only paragraph in the Report, it would be worth all the investigation and trouble which hon. Members have taken, because it is a flashlight into the methods of the Government Department. I am certain it is well within their capacity to effect a saving upon these items.
I come to the Board of Inland Revenue Report. There are some very striking figures there also. Of course, in what I have to say I make full allowance for the difference between 1914–15 and 1922–23. Here it is indicated that the cost of the Department in 1914–15 was £784,633, while this year it had risen to £4,651,406. In 1914–15 the number of persons employed was 4,216, while in the present year the figure is 12,733. Let us make a comparison of the sums raised. We have got the services given, which include death duties, stamps, Land Tax, House Duty, Mineral Rights Duty, Income Tax, Excess Profits Duty, and Corporation Profits Tax. You take the last two out and you find that the total raised in 1913–14 was £88,000,000, while last year the amount raised was £521,000,000. Speaking generally, it is quite safe to say that it does not cost very much more to collect £500 in Income Tax than to collect £50; but that sort of comparison should not be carried too far. While admitting there must have been a substantial increase in the staff—a great comparative increase—it does look as if that vast increase in the numbers alone from 4,000 to 12,000 requires careful examination and more explanation than we have already had on the Estimate.
The final point I want to take is in connection with the Fifth Report. I am quoting the penultimate paragraph on page 4, to which attention has already been drawn. It shows that before the War the Civil Service consisted of 283,000 people, costing £29,500,000, whereas now, excluding Ireland, it consists of 325,000 people costing, with bonus, £67,400,000. That is the sort of thing that the public and the ordinary Member of this House—with whom I include myself—can never get over. It cannot be necessary, with the constant stripping away of superfluous services left from the War, and the recent demand for economy in all possible directions, that there should he that still marked difference between these two sets of figures. While giving full credit for such arrangements as have already been made by the Government to meet this demand for economy, it shows that they fall far short not only of what they ought to do but what they could do. I repeat once more my sense of indebtedness to those hon. Members who have presented these very valuable Reports.

The PRESIDENT of the BOARD of EDUCATION (Mr. Herbert Fisher): The right hon. Baronet the Member for the City of London (Sir F. Banbury) has presented to the House a very lucid summary of the findings of the Select Committee on Estimates over which he presided with so much courtesy and ability. I do not propose, in the few observations which I shall address to the House, to deal with more than a small segment of his speech, that segment which is concerned with the Estimates of my own Department, nor shall I attempt to cover all the ground, even here, which was covered by the right hon. Baronet. He alluded, very naturally, to the great rise in the salaries paid to elementary teachers. He reminded the House that those salaries constituted 70 per cent. of the Estimates of the Board, and he compared the salaries which are paid now with the salaries paid at the beginning of the War. This matter of teachers' salaries has been so often debated here; the issues, social, economic and educational, which have led to this considerable rise in salaries are so familiar to hon. Members, the system of grants now being examined by an expert Committee of this House, which has enabled
the local education authorities to make considerable advances in the salaries which they pay their teachers is so familiar, that I shall not occupy the time of the House in dealing with that important matter. I will confine myself to that part of the speech of the right hon. Baronet which was concerned with the expenditure of Whitehall.
In criticising the salaries paid to the Civil Service, I think that the critic is very often apt to be unduly influenced by the cost of a few of the higher salaries. I think that criticism of public Departments should be based on the realisation of the average salaries paid to the whole Department. The officers of all grades employed at Whitehall number 1,871, and the average salary, including bonus, is £422 per annum.

Mr. ROSE: Does that include charwomen?

Mr. FISHER: No, it includes the clerks. It is, of course, true that members of the higher staff do enjoy very much higher salaries. The number of the higher staff provided for in this year's Estimate is 99. My right hon. Friend the Member for Peebles (Sir D. Maclean) expressed the view that there might be room for considerable economy in the administrative Department of Whitehall. I agree that there is room for economy, and we are reducing our higher staff.
As I have not given the full figures before, I should like to inform the House what steps we have already taken with a view to reducing the numbers of the higher staff and its cost at Whitehall. The total reduction since the reorganisation of the higher staff in 1920 is 14, representing a salary cost of about £14,000.
This is made up as follows: One Principal Assistant Secretary, two Assistant. Secretaries, two Principals, one Senior Examiner, 5 Assistant Principals, one Assistant Estates Clerk, one Legal Examiner and one Secretary to the Juvenile Organisation Committee. By the end of October there will be a further reduction of three posts, namely, one Assistant Secretary, one Principal, and one Assistant Principal, making a total reduction since 1920 of 17 posts, with a salary saving of about £17,000. I hope the House will realise that we are endeavouring at the Board of Education to effect economy in our staff.

Lord EUSTACE PERCY: The right hon. Gentleman gave the average cost of the civil servant in his Department at £422 per annum. I see that in the fifth Report the average cost of the civil servant for the whole Government service is £207.

9.0. P.M.

Mr. FISHER: The average of £422 includes bonus. It is perfectly true that there has been an increase in the executive and clerical staff of 234 in 1922–23 as compared with 1913–14. This increase is due to the formation of the Pensions Branch, with a staff of 144, to an increase. of 52 in the numbers of the Accountant-General's Department. That large increase is due to a large addition to the work of the Department, owing to the paying of pensions under the School Teachers Superannuation Act, 1918; the assessment and payment of awards under the Pensions Increase Act, 1920, and the taking over from the Paymaster-General of the payment of the teachers' pensions under the Acts of 1898 and 1912; also the assessment and payment of grants to the local education authorities under the Act of 1918. I think these are very good reasons for the increase in the number of the headquarters staff. Recently I have been looking into this matter with a view of seeing whether any further reductions can he made, and though I cannot promise any immediate reductions, because the initial work is very great, I think in time we shall be able to effect further reductions there. Now I pass to the second point raised by the right hon. Baronet the Member for the City of London, and that was the salaries paid to women inspectors. Let me, first of all, remind the House that in May, 1920, this House accepted a Resolution to the effect that:
It is expedient that women should have an equal opportunity of employment with men in all branches within the United Kingdom, and under all local authorities provided that the claims of ex-service men are first of all considered and that they should also receive equal pay.
That is a Resolution of this House in May, 1920, but that attitude was to some extent modified on the 5th August, 1921, when the following Resolutions were passed:
(1) That women shall be appointed to and continue to hold posts in the Civil Service within the United Kingdom under
the same Regulations, present or future, as govern the classification and (in so far as regards status and authority) other conditions of service for men.
(2) That, having regard to the present financial position of the country, this House cannot commit itself to the increase in Civil Service salaries involved in the payment of women in all cases at the same rate as men; but that the question of the remuneration of women as compared with men shall be reviewed within the period not exceeding three years.
The decision of the House on the 5th August, 1921, was that men and women in the Civil Service should be paid equally. With regard to the salaries of the women inspectors, they bear the same relation to the salaries of the men inspectors as obtain between men and women in the Civil Service generally. They are lower, but they bear the same relation at the Board of Education as they do in other parts of the country. It would be perfectly impossible for us to obtain the services of the highly-trained and the highly-educated women we require for this particular kind of work at anything like the old rates of salaries. Many of the ablest women are now going into the study of medicine, some are taking to the law, while others are engaged in commerce, and, consequently, it is desirable that the Board of Education should be in a position to secure the. services of able, experienced, practical women who will command the confidence of the head mistresses of our women's colleges and our secondary schools.
If we are to do that, then we must pay them adequate salaries, and the reason for the increase in the salaries of women inspectors from a rate beginning at £200 and rising to £400 to a rate beginning at £300 and rising to £500 was that the Board found that the lower salary was quite insufficient to attract women for the requisite status, experience and qualifications. We have had the greatest difficulty in filling the posts of Training College Staff Inspector and Elementary School Staff Inspector. At the present moment we have in the ranks of our women inspectors women who have been headmistresses of secondary schools, and principals of training colleges and of technical schools. It is very desirable that we should have women of this kind. Woman's education is very important, and it is particularly important that
headmistresses of girls' schools all over the country should receive advice from the Board, and that that advice should be given by women who command confidence by reason of their ability, their record, and their character. My right hon. Friend called special attention to the salary paid to the Chief Woman Inspector. What has the Chief Woman Inspector to do? She has to have an intimate knowledge of all sides of girls' education—university, training college, technical, secondary, elementary and domestic training. She ought to be one of the ablest women in the whole country. She has control of a staff of women inspectors, who are responsible throughout the country fur the inspection of every side of the education of girls. She must be able to select suitable women for the different sides, and she has to be well qualified to judge of their efficiency. I need hardly emphasise the special personal qualification which is desirable in such an officer. I submit that the salary paid to the Chief Woman Inspector—£850, rising to £1,000 subsequently—bears a proper relation to the salary of the Chief Male Inspector, which is £1,200.
If you compare that salary with the salaries drawn by women holding high academic positions in this country, it will be found that it is not exceptional. Let me give some of the salaries that are being paid to the heads of great women's colleges. £800, plus board and residence for the whole year, plus a pension allowance of £95 a year payable with interest at any time on leaving. £750 residerr. £800 resident. £800 resident, plus superannuation. £1,500. These are typical salaries which are now being paid to heads of important women's colleges. I submit, therefore, to the House that this salary paid to the most important woman in the Education Department is not excessive. My right hon. Friend passed on to refer to the Inspector of Music. I gather from what he said the right hon. Gentleman is not musical, and I shall not attempt therefore to emphasise to him that there is no form of art that has a snore general appeal than music. Neither shall I attempt to describe what has been done by our Chief Inspector of Music for music in our schools. We are extraordinarily lucky in having secured his services. He is a very eminent man. He is a great composer.
His salary is £1,000 a year without pension. I am referring to Dr. Arthur Somervall.

Sir F. BANBURY: He gets £1,150 without pension.

Mr. FISHER: £1,000 from us and the rest from Scotland, and I venture, to think that that is a salary which certainly ought to be paid.

Sir F. BANBURY: Do you not think we could do without, music altogether in these hard times?

Mr. FISHER: No. Then my right hon. Friend went from music to health, and referred to the very distinguished officer who advises the Minister of Health, as well as the President of the Board of Education. He suggested that he is unduly remunerated. The greater part of the salary is borne on the Vote of the Ministry of Health, and I will merely observe that there is no more distinguished public servant than Sir George Newman—no one to whom the public health of this country owes a greater debt. I am convinced that every penny of the salary paid to him is returned to the country over and over again. These are, I think, all the points raised by the right hon. Baronet in connection with the extension of the Board of Education at Whitehall. I will only conclude by assuring the House that I am fully alive to the necessity for economy. I am continuing my survey of the work of my Department with a view to seeing where retrenchment can be made without injury to the public service. So far from objecting to any kind of criticism with respect to the expenditure of my Department, I heartily welcome it, and I shall be only too glad to pursue any inquiry which is suggested by any hon. Member in this House with respect to further economies.

Sir PHILIP PILDITCH: As a member of the Estimates Committee, I am sure that we are all very grateful to the right hon. Member for Peebles (Sir D. Maclean) for the encomiums he passed on our work. I think we should be even more grateful to the Government for having turned up in such numbers on this occasion, and for having given us this opportunity for the discussion of our Report. It must he fairly clear that a Committee like the Estimates Committee, which sits in private during the
whole year, dealing with the Estimates in detail, can expect to achieve very little unless opportunities are afforded for the discussion of its Reports. We should have liked to have had an opportunity rather earlier in the Session, when it might have been possible to deal more effectively with these matters we have to deal with, but we must be thankful for, the mercies vouchsafed to us, and the sight of so well filled a Treasury Bench is certainly very cheering to us to-night. With regard to the speech of the President of the Board of Education, I am a little regretful that he saw cause to speak quite so early in the Debate. I should have liked him to have spoken a little later. My right hon. Friend the Chairman of the Committee dealt very fully with various details connected with the salaries of the higher grades of officials in the Board of Education and in other Departments, but he did not refer very definitely or specifically to one point, with regard to the Education Estimates, to which I should like to refer. I shall not go into it in very much detail now, because I want to refer to it in a moment. I am rather sorry that the Financial Secretary to the Treasury is not here at the moment, because I shall also have something to say about it as affecting his Department. With regard to the Education Estimates, if the right hon. Gentleman will look at paragraph 9 on page 4 of our Second Report, he will find that it says:
The undertaking by the Department to pay grants to the local authorities up to 1923 in London and 1925 in the country on the basis of the agreement entered into between the latter and the teachers, consequent upon the Report of the Burnham Committee, renders effective examination end criticism by your Committee of this part of the Estimates impossible.
The real fact of the matter was that we found ourselves confronted with an Estimate of £44,900,000, but that, owing to the system which had been adopted, under which the teachers' salaries were, may I suggest respectfully, taken away from the purview of this House, and certainly out of the purview of the Estimates Committee, the only portion that we could consider was something like the odd £4,900,000. Practically the whole of the Estimate was removed from any possibility of examination by the Estimates Committee, owing to the method by which, under the Burnham Reports, the
teachers' salaries had been settled. That was done some years ago, when the salaries themselves amounted to £16,000,000 a year. But, by the process of the system laid down in those Reports, whereby the increases have gone on year after year, we come finally, in this year's Estimates, to something which, so far as the Imperial Exchequer is concerned, is 60 per cent. of £39,000,000, instead of the percentage of £16,000,000 at the beginning of the War. That point, with regard to the ineffectiveness of the Estimates Committee in examining some of the Estimates, concerns not only the Board of Education, but some of the other Departments as well.
I do not propose to follow my right hon. Friend in his able criticism of the various details in regard to salaries; I shall leave that exactly where he left it. It is summarised sufficiently in the fact, which has already been brought out in answer to the Noble Lord the Member for Hastings (Lord E. Percy), that the salaries of the Civil Service have just doubled since the beginning of the War. I want to deal with one or two matters of principle, and, since the Financial Secretary to the Treasury has returned to the House, may I say that we regret exceedingly that he was unable to continue his attendances at our meetings, which he started at the beginning of this year? I offer that remark, not as a criticism but as a compliment to him, for there were very good reasons why he was unable to be present; but if, another year, it were possible for a representative of the Treasury to be present at the meetings of the Committee, I think it would be a great advantage to the work of the Committee, to this House, and to the Government. As our Chairman has told the House to-night, we have examined, one after the other, five Estimates, and in doing so we have become conscious of the fact that, as I have already indicated, large blocks of public expenditure have in effect, much in the same way as the Education Estimates, been so déalt with in advance that they are practically outside our power of examining into them. One of these is referred to at the bottom of page 3 of the Fifth Report, the Report on the Treasury, from which I will read a few lines:
The witness further stated that the Treasury considered, from the financial-
aspect, the question of transfers from temporary to permanent employment, which are productive of additional cost by way of superannuation and the like. Your Committee are of opinion that such changes as these, involving an increased expenditure over a period of years, should not be embarked upon without a proper report and estimate of expenditure in subsequent years, as well as in the current year, being made by the Establishments Department of the Treasury.
We found that in matters of that kind there had been large increases of expenditure which had been practically settled in advance as far as principle was concerned, without, so far as we could ascertain, any Estimate being forthcoming as to what the cost was likely to be in the future. That is exactly the same thing which has happened with regard to the expenditure on teachers' salaries under the Burnham award, and. it is also, so far as we could ascertain, exactly what happened in connection with-the enormous subject of the re-grading of civil servants under the re-grading scheme. So far as one can make out, our financial system does not make provision for commitments of this kind, which are entered into in principle by proposals made to the House, and accepted by the House, without being at that time the subject of Estimates carried into the future as to what the cost is likely to be.
The principal contribution that I would venture to offer to the House on this subject is that I think it is very desirable that some such steps as that should be taken. There are the means by which they can be taken. The gem of the organisation by which it could he done is there. Within the last few years there has been set up in the Treasury what ought to be a very valuable Department, the Establishments Department, which is supposed to be in control of Establishments generally all over the Civil Service. In my opinion, if the duty were committed to the Establishments Department of the Treasury of presenting, I should say annually, and when such proposals are made on matters such as those to which I have referred, Reports and Estimates to the Treasury, and through the. Treasury to the House itself, the Government and the House would have taken the first, and in fact the principal, step that could be taken towards the handling and control of expenditure at the only
time and place at which it can be thoroughly and effectively handled and controlled, namely, at the source. If I may be allowed to make a suggestion to the Treasury, I would say that our experience of the Establishments Department, and the help they gave us on the Committee in examining into details and Estimates, was such that it has led me to believe—the Committee generally have the same feeling—that it is on those lines that progress in ordinary, humdrum economy can be made. I do not mean the sort of economy which may be brought about by the Geddes Committee which, of course, can only be constituted once in a lustrum, and which achieves its purpose and cannot be repeated; but by the Estimates Committee of the House, which is a patient, humble, hardworking, laborious Committee, which goes on week after week and month after month, and is willing to go on year after year in the interests of the nation and the House. If the House and the Government would only back up the Committee, and if the Secretary to the Treasury would only back us up in using the Establishments Department in the way I have suggested, I think some extremely useful and lasting good might arise.
I have only one more point of principle to which to refer. The problem before the Estimates Committee is that of economy. That is what we are sent upstairs to do our best to achieve. That problem means this year that we have a gross expenditure of £950,000,000, and we have to help, so far as we can towards the reduction of that in the ensuing year. I have been very much struck as the work of the Committee has gone on—we have got to look these things in the face—with what appears to be the fact that almost the only large source of possible reduction which appears to be left consists in the extra emoluments, either by way of war bonus or salaries give subsequent to the War, superannuation, or whatever it may be, which all classes of persons who work for the State have been obtaining. Out of that £950,000,000 £364,000,000 goes in the Consolidated Fund, £167,000,000 in the Army, Navy and Air Force, and £346,000,000 is left for the Civil Services. War Pensions and the Old Age Pensions alone take £120,000,000 out of that £346,000,000. That leaves £226,000,000. On the Estimates Committee we had these different Departments to examine, and
we tried to get to the bottom of what these extra emoluments really amounted to. We endeavoured to work it out. We have only had time to examine five Departments this year; we could not cover the whole field. Therefore I asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he could give me an Estimate, and he did so in answer to a question a few days ago. The result of the information which he gave me really came to this, that the bonuses of the Civil Service, including the industrial staff; the extra pay to the police; the extra pay to the fighting forces; the extra pay to the higher grades of the Civil Service under the right hon. Member for Paisley (Mr. Asquith's) report, and the various increases which have automatically followed on those increases by way of superannuation—all of which have gone up, on the extra war emoluments—amount to something like £120,000,000 out of the £220,000,000 which is the residue left to the civil servants.
It is quite clear that it is very difficult to expect War bonuses to come down, except on the cost of living. Therefore we are faced, undoubtedly, with a great difficulty as to where serious reductions arc to be found next year. My hon. Friends on the Labour Benches are very keen about reducing the first item I mentioned, namely, the Consolidated Fund. Personally, believing that the economy which we were sent upstairs to try to help effect in some small way is of the essence of the matter for this nation at the present time, I think if all parties alike would agree to a reduction and if, in exchange for a reduction in advance of the established rate by all these Departments paid by the State, I, for one—though I do not think it would be desirable in any case to make a compulsory arrangement of this kind—would not at all object to endeavouring to carry out a, voluntary reduction of the £346,000,000, which is the sum paid in interest on Loans under the Consolidated Fund Act. However that may be, it is perfectly clear in regard to the £346,000,000, a part of which we had the honour of going into during the last year upstairs, it has been shown clearly by the Chairman of the Committee and by the Reports which he has signed and of which he, together with the rest of us, was the author—that in the points to which the Committee has referred in these Reports it is not only desirable,
but in many cases absolutely essential, that considerable reductions should be made. It is quite clear that nothing which the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the House hopes for in the nature of economy next year, and of reduced expenditure and taxation can be forthcoming if savings of that kind are not effected.

The MINISTER of LABOUR (Dr. Macnamara): I fully agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Spelthorne (Sir P. Pilditch) as to the very great importance of the work that has been done, and is being done, by the Estimates Committee. Those of us who are responsible for the Departments feel that the least we can do is to be prepared to hear further questions which may be put to take careful note of all such questions, and to be ready to answer them. I am bound to say that my right hon. Friend the Chairman of the Estimates Committee dealt comparatively gently with me. I know his position, personally. He does not want a, Ministry of Labour at all. He thinks it is a wasteful and ridiculous excess, if not, indeed, positively harmful. He thinks it ought to keep out of industrial matters altogether, and if it ever does intervene, then it is not worth very much, if, indeed, it is worth anything at all. That being his view, I must say with thankfulness that I think the note he struck was one of remarkable tolerance, and I am very grateful to him for his fairness.

Sir F. BANBURY: I have been in an official position.

Dr. MACNAMARA: The right hon. Gentleman is in one, and I am grateful for his fairness. He looks back with a deep and happy sigh to the days when this organisation was a branch of the Board of Trade, spending £500,000 in a year on administration. At the same time he tells us we have had placed upon us a vast field of work which was not then in existence. He takes note of that. He recognises that very great field, a new part of our commission, which deals with the training and the resettlement of ex-service men. He recognises and tells us in his speech that whereas in the days to which he looks back with such regret there were only 2,750,000 persons under the Insurance Act, there are now 12,000,000. Above all, he points out—and
it is a most significant fact—that whereas in 1913–14 that Department of the Board of Trade paid out £500,000 in unemployment benefit, the Ministry which I preside over paid out last year £67,000,000. My right hon. Friend takes careful note of all these things and says, there it is, although no doubt it would not be there if he had his way. I am grateful, but there are one or two "i's" I must dot and "t's" I must cross. He points out that the Vote this year for the Ministry of Labour is 218,010,604. Last year it was £22,137,405. Manifestly a very great deal of that reduction is due to what my hon. Friend opposite called humdrum economy day by day, watching the public purse and cutting our coat according to our cloth. I think my right hon. Friend might have given me a little word of encouragement, following so zealously, as I am, in the way he would have me go. Let me give a further example. I will not take last year's figures and compare them with this or the figures of the year before. I will take this year. On 1st January of this year, again showing continuous and careful regard to the necessity for economising wherever possible in a humdrum way, the staff of the Ministry was 22.750, excluding the industrial employés in the training centres for disabled men. On 1st July it had become 18,950. That is a saving at the rate of £620,000 a year—economies on previous economies. I hope that next year, if we are all spared, he will spare a word of thanks for the economies which will then come before him.
There are only three matters on which my right hon. Friend and the Select Committee made comment. My right hon. Friend dealt with two. I should like to say a word on the third. which he did not mention, although it is commented upon in the Report of his Committee. In the first place, the Committee pointed out that the staff of the Ministry included a Chief Labour Adviser at a salary of £3,000 inclusive, and expressed the view that it should be practicable to secure a Chief Labour Adviser at a lower salary. A reference to the printed Estimates for this year will show that this post is to be reconsidered. There is a footnote saying that there will be a reconsideration of that office and salary on the occurrence of a vacancy. I should like to say a word or two about that post and the person who fills it. The occupant of the post is
Sir David Shackleton—a great public servant, one whose sagacity, knowledge, tact and patience I can testify to. It is difficult for me to over-estimate the value and importance of his qualities in the duties he has to perform. I do not think there is any doubt as to the abilities which he possesses in any part of the House. He became Permanent Secretary to the Ministry when it was formed at the close of 1916 at a salary of £1,500. There was then a Chief Labour Adviser under the title of Chief Industrial Commissioner—Sir George Askwith—and the salary at that time was the equivalent of that of a Secretary of a first-class Department—£2,000 a year. I mention this because my right hon. Friend seemed to think there was only one person at work at that time in the office of the Chief Commissioner. There were two.
An effort was made for a time to combine these two offices in one, but I think that, was a mistake, and experience showed that it was quite impossible to combine the two in one. There were two persons engaged from the beginning and not one. Therefore, in April, 1920, it was decided to appoint two joint permanent Secretaries to the Ministry at a salary of £2,000 a year each. Sir David Shackleton was one, and by the appointment of the other he was set free to discharge the important duties of Chief Labour Adviser. Then we had the Committee presided over by my right hon. Friend the Member for Paisley (Mr. Asquith) and on the recommendation of that Committee it was decided that the salary attaching to the principal posts of a first class Department which this Ministry was held to be should be at: the rate of £3,000 per annum. That salary was paid to these two gentlemen holding what were held to he first class posts. My right hon. Friend did not go on to tell us that other facts were submitted to his Committee. When the then Permanent Secretary was transferred to the Colonial Office I took the following steps. I did not think the continuance of two posts at £3,000 a year was justified. The present Secretary was accordingly appointed as Permanent Secretary at a salary of £2,200, Sir David Shackleton retaining the office and salary which he had so far held. This post and the salary of £3,000 attached to it, as I say, and as is set forth in the Estimate, will be reconsidered on a vacancy. At the same time I decided not to continue beyond
August, 1922, the post of Second Secretary, the salary attaching to which is £1,350, plus bonus, then at the rate of £750, and not to fill further for the time being the post, then £1,250, vacated by the new Secretary. Therefore, in the place of two posts, each carrying a salary of £3,000 a year, plus one post carrying a salary of £1,350 and another carrying £1,250, there is now one post at £3,000 and one at £2,200, which by a simple process of arithmetic appears to be a reduction of £3,400.

Sir F. BANBURY: Go on and do better.

Dr. MACNAMARA: I am very much obliged for that tardy word of recognition. That is the whole story. My right hon. Friend referred to the President of the Industrial Court with a salary of £3,000 a year. The Committee consider that the salary paid to a county court judge, £1,500 a year, would be sufficient for that office. The Industrial Court is to all intents and purposes a judicial body, practically independent of the Ministry of Labour, or of any other Government Department. The President of the Court is not in any sense a member of the staff of the Ministry of Labour, though, as the Minister of Labour is responsible for the administration of the Industrial Court Act, the cost of the Industrial Court is borne, including the salary of the President, upon the Vote of the Ministry of Labour. When the Industrial Court Act was set up by the present Chancellor of Exchequer, my predecessor in the office of Minister of Labour, it. was recognised that the office of President of the Court would be one of great responsibility, and that if employers and trade unions were to be expected to refer their differences to the Court and to accept the settlements, as they have done, with, I think, one exception, it was essential that the Government should appoint a highly-qualified gentleman as President.
The Committee admit that the President also acts as Chairman of the National Wages Board under the Railways Act, 1921, and he fulfils other duties in addition to the duties falling upon him as President of the Court. Only the other day, as the House will remember, the President of the Court sat in connection with the engineers' dispute, and I should like to pay a tribute to the way in which he carried out his difficult and responsible duty. The present holder is a distin-
guished lawyer, with practically unique experience of industrial arbitration, and it could not be expected that so distinguished a member of the legal profession should have been asked to abandon his practice in the Courts for a remuneration less than that fixed for the office. Naturally, I attach the greatest weight to recommendations of the Estimate Committee, and I do my best to give practical effect to those recommendations, but with great respect I think that this recommendation is not a wise one.
The Select Committee made reference to the fact that the Appointments Branch of the Ministry which endeavours to find billets for ex-officers, have dealt with ex-officers when their temporary appointments have terminated, and have placed them back upon the list of persons for whom appointments are to be found. The Committee is rather critical of that procedure, and suggest that this must necessarily tend to prolong the existence of this branch of the Ministry. I offer no apology for placing at the disposal of these ex-officers the facilities of the Appointments Branch, and in trying to get billets for ex-officers who have only been appointed to a temporary job or who come back from service in Ireland. I do not think the House will disagree with me in this matter. We are not dealing with men who have permanent billets but with ex-officers who have had temporary jobs. The job is closed, the period for which it was filled is exhausted, and we have put them back on the list of the Appointments Branch. Considerable reductions have already been made in the cost of the branch. To-day, the cost is less than one-fourth of what it was two years ago, and the staff is far less than one-fourth of what it was two years ago.
The right hon. Member for Peebles (Sir D. Maclean) referred to the fact that the Ministry of Labour is debited with £471,150 for postal services, and £62,000 for telephone services. Of the first item, for postal services, nearly one-half or £210,000 is the charge against us by the Post Office for selling unemployment insurance stamps to the value of £25,000,000 or £30,000,000. Of the rest, ordinary postage amount to £118,820. Franked forms and envelopes amount to £161,500. There are also a few smaller items, such as commission on postal drafts and postal orders. With regard
to the second item, £02,000 for telephone services, of course, every care must be taken in requisitioning trunk calls; but it would be penny wise and pound foolish not to requisition a trunk call in a case where industrial dislocation is threatened in a distant part of the country. That is the main purpose for which these trunk calls are used. In regard to calls in a particular area, they are used by the Employment Exchanges in connection with vacancies offered for men on the Employment Register.
There are not too many vacancies; indeed there are far too few vacancies for the men unemployed, and it very often happens that when we send a man off for a vacancy, the position is filled in the meantime. Rather than subject the man to the annoyance and irritation of finding that the job has been filled when he gets to the place, the telephone call is used for the purpose of ascertaining whether or not the position has been filled. These are the two things which constitute the greater proportion of the telephone charges. Early this year I set up a Departmental Committee to examine the whole of our postal and telephone services with a view to effecting still farther economies. The attention of the staff has again been called to the care which must be exercised in regard to all such matters, and particularly in regard to the control of franked forms and envelopes.

Sir D. MACLEAN: There is also the question of travelling expenses, which amount to £169,000.

Dr. MACINAMARA: If my right hon. Friend had given me notice that he intended to raise that point, I would have give him full details. If he will put a question down I will give him complete details with great pleasure.

Mr. AMMON: Everybody will agree that the exercising of proper economy should have the hearty support of all sections of the House. In the Reports under discussion we arc unable to consider policy, and in the main the proposals for retrenchment must turn upon salaries and wages. Speaking for my colleagues on these benches, we are not convinced that it is sound economy to economise only in regard to wages, and that in the long run that may prove rather a disaster than otherwise, particularly when those wages may originally have been very
nearly the border line of sweating and starvation. The tendency one feels on the other side of the House is to attack the wages and conditions of civil servants and railway workers in the hope that it may stir up jealousy and ill-feeling among other workers outside. We suggest that it is good that there should be somewhere set up a good standard of wages, and surely the State should do it in order that its example may be followed by other employers.
The cost of travelling could be considerably decreased if all civil servants were to travel third class instead of first class. Members of Parliament travel third class, and surely it is not too much to expect civil servants to travel third class. But I am sorry that I cannot join wholeheartedly the right hon. Member for Peebles (Sir D. Maclean) in congratulating the framers of these reports, as I should like to do, because the Report on the Department, of which I do know something, is so misleading, and is couched in such language, that one is unable to get a real understanding of the facts of the case, and can only say that, either through gross carelessness or deliberation, it is misleading to Members of this House. The right hon. Member for the City of London, in introducing the Estimates Report, said that there was not such a strong case for people who were receiving very high salaries as for those who were receiving low wages. But we have to remember that No. 3 Report is, in the main, an attack on the wages and war bonus of that section of the Service which comprises more than twice as many as the rest of the civil servants. Out of the 325,000 people employed in the Civil Service, 225,000 are in the Post Office, and for the most part they are wage earners on a very low scale of payment.
The framers of the Report have put it in such a form as to be, though I do not suggest intentionally, misleading. They have quoted basic wages plus cost of living bonus without differentiating between them. And. they have also quoted, so far as the Post Office is concerned, the highest rates in the country, those for London, as though they were typical of the whole country. It is true that there is a small sentence spatch-cocked into the Report, which does
suggest that in the provinces wages are substantially lower than in London. But in no place in the Report is it pointed out that the bonus is fluctuating, varying with the cost of living, and that in September next it is due to be reduced by no less than 4/26ths according to the figures for the cost of living. Therefore, since what we have to consider is that the bonus is proportionate to the cost of living above 1914, an adequate comparison of wages and a standard of living must be based on the basic rates of wages paid, and it is not fair to endeavour to arrive at it in any other way.
10.0 P.M.
The Select Committee say that the business of the Post Office in 7921–22 shows a reduction all round in Post Office work, with the exception of registered letters and parcels, and in telephone, an increase in trunk calls, but a decrease in local calls. A statement like that, left like that, is wholly misleading as to the facts of the case. The business of the Post Office consists not only of postal work and savings bank transactions, and telephone service, but of several other Government services, but only a passing reference is made to the very large amount of new business undertaken by the Post Office. since 1914, and no attempt is made to estimate its extent. The Post Office has to deal with war pensions, with allowances, with War Loans, with dividends on War Savings Certificates, with Entertainment Tax, stamps and Income Tax stamps, and many other things which must be set off against the decline in what is commonly known as ordinary postal work—that is, the mere posting and handling of letters going through the Post Office. No attempt is made to estimate its extent and size. All that is done is to suggest that there is a decrease in the work. The statement that there is a decrease has reference only to the ordinary items of postal and telegraph and telephone work. But it does not estimate the other things or give any estimate of what they involve. They are spread over the postal workers as an increased burden of duty. The Select Committee say:
The net result is that while salaries have risen greatly, the number of persons employed has slightly decreased and the amount of postal work proper also shows a decrease.
This is misleading, because it ignores the amount of work over and above the ordinary postal work. Then in paragraph C they say that in inner London a boy of 18 years entering the service as a postman begins at 45s. a week, including bonus at the present scale, and rises to 92s. a week, including bonus. The facts are that a postman 18 years of age in inner London receives a basic wage of 22s. and in outer London in class 1 he receives a basic wage of 20s. The framers of the Report include the whole thing. They would make it appear that that is the basic wage without mentioning that the bonus is fluctuating. A postman in class 2 has a basic wage of 19s. a week and in class 3 of 18s. a week. Pre-War the basic wage was 19s. a week as against 22s.; 19s. as against 20s.; 18s. as against 19s.; and 17s. as against 18s. The maximum basic wage in inner London is 46s. a week and the Committee have given the London figures as if they were a fair representation of the whole position in the Post Office service. In outer London in class 1 the basic wage rises to 41s. But it takes in inner London 14 years before a man gets the maximum of 46s. as against a basic wage which in 1914 was 43s.
Hon. Members opposite will not take into consideration the increase in the cost of living which bears so heavily on people whose wages were at the bare margin of existence before the War, and that the increase has simply kept pace with the increase, and is falling with the decrease, in the cost of living. If we have regard to that, we shall see that the rates are by no means excessive compared with the 1914 standard. In practice very few new entrants enter at the age of 18 at present. The majority of entrants now are ex-service men with families, and their basic starting pay is 28s. a week. The majority of them are above 20 years of age. Those are the actual facts, and they were not brought out as clearly as they might have been in the Report. The right hon. Member for the City of London (Sir F. Banbury) stated that postmen are paid overtime at the rate of time-and-a-quarter. The Committee did not comment on that. This rate is less than is generally paid in other callings. A good deal of emphasis has been laid on the free medical service and the free uniform. It is interesting to note that the free medical service costs about 13s. per head
per year. The uniform is supplied, both as a protective and distinguishing mark, just as uniform is supplied to a policeman. The uniforms are supplied not wholly in the interests of the men wearing them, but in the interests also of the service. A postman, when in uniform, is subject to a good many restrictions of his civil rights, as other uniformed men are.

Mr. A. M. SAMUEL: It reduces his tailor's bill.

Mr. AMMON: An hon. Member says that it reduces his tailor's bill, but. a fair consideration of the question would cause us to remember that the man has to be dressed in this uniform, that it is part of his condition of service, and that it is in itself of service to the whole community. Paragraph (4) of the Report is the most misleading of all. It says that sorter-tracers are paid, including bonus, 10s. a week, and it adds: "The witness was asked whether women could do that work, and he replied that the work was to be transferred to women." That is all that is said about the transfer. One cannot wonder that the newspapers have made a good deal of capital out of this statement and have displayed it widely, to the great misrepresentation of the humbler persons in the Civil Service. The Committee must have known that women in the Post Office receive very much lower rates than men. The Committee made no reference to that fact; they simply made reference to the men, and to the highest salary received by them. The women sorter-tracers will receive considerably less than £5 10s. a week, but there is no explanation whatever of that to be found in the Report. The Committee must have known, also, that the sorter-tracer receives 55s. a week basic pay, and bonus, only after he has completed 16 years' service.
There is a legitimate ground for protest at having put before this House the maximum figures of the highest grade so as to leave hon. Members with the impression that those figures represented the standard conditions so far as these people are concerned. The medical service is not expensive, considering what has to be performed by the officers concerned, and it is protective so far as the Department is concerned. It is a provision which pays from the Post Office point of view. The Post Office maintains this service because it sees need for some protective measure and because it demands a very high standard of physical
efficiency. To spend 13s. per head per year to attain this end is not a big outlay. Very often private medical certificates are discounted considerably. It should be noted also that the figure of £144,316 covers the health insurance employers' contributions, which have to he paid by employers in other industries.
A reference has been made to girl probationers. The Committee's Report states that girls are taken on as probationers at 14½ years of age and are paid 14s. a week. The basic wage of a girl under 15 years for inner London is 7s. per week, and for outer London 6s. per week. At 15 years of age she gets 8s. in inner London, 7s. per week in outer London, in Class 2 basic wage of 5s. a week, and in Class 3 a basic wage of 5s. a week. Surely that is not an exorbitant sum to pay? Any increase that comes to these girls is a proportionate rise to meet the cost of living. The statement of the Committee in regard to these learners is not a statement of fact. The Committee state that at 16 years of age girl probationers are, if there are vacancies, taken to be trained as telephonists, and receive, including bonus, a salary of 36s. a week. The Report adds,
They are, in effect, apprentices being instructed in an employment, and during the course of their instruction they receive the above-mentioned salary. In ordinary life persons of that ages learning a trade or business would probably be paid only a nominal salary or would even contribute something towards their instruction.
What are the facts? Telephone learners are paid a basic wage of 10s. a week in London and 8s. in the provinces, and they receive that basic wage only when they are fully qualified telephonists.

Sir F. BANBURY: That was not the evidence given. The evidence was that at 16 years of age they received 36s. a week, including bonus.

Mr. AMMON: I am informing the right hon. Baronet that telephonist learners receive a basic wage of 10s. a week in London and 8s. in the provinces, until they are fully competent to take a switchboard with 200 calls an hour.

Sir F. BANBURY: I do not know who told the hon. Member that. It was not the evidence given.

Mr. AMMON: I happen to know the facts from my own knowledge. A
of 200 calls an hour is enough. The work is worrying and distressing, and the number of girls who break down from nerve trouble is considerable. The 36s. mentioned by the Committee is the London rate; it includes the bonus for; a fully qualified telephonist, and that wage will be reduced by 4-26ths in September next. The basic rate for, telephonists in London is 18s. a week, and in the provinces 16s., 15s., or 14s., according to the grading of the class of work. No appointments are made unless a vacancy occurs. In the last Debate in this House testimony was paid to the great improvement in the telephone service. The Post Office workers maintain it has been improved because telephonists are now being paid something approaching a decent wage, and discontent has been allayed. Regarding the higher grades, the Committee state that the salaries of surveyors have risen from a maximum of £900 to a maximum of £1,200, including bonus. After all, that is a rise of 33⅓ per cent. compared with the official figure of the cost of living, showing a rise of over 80 per cent. Again, there seems to be a. reluctance to face the fact that even in regard to the higher grades the 1914 standard should be maintained, and in the lower a margin over the cost of living must be maintained if people are to be kept from starvation. The only increase in bonus has been an increase to keep pace with the standard of living, and the bonus falls with the fall in the cost of living. That should be emphasised all along the line. The Committee say:
The granting of a bonus, in addition to an increase in the salaries has resulted in a large increase in expenditure.

Sir F. BANBURY: I have the evidence here now regarding the telephonists. Sir George Evelyn Murray is the witness, and his examination is as follows:
Mr. MARRIOTT: This salary is for a girl of 14½ years of age, and I presume these probationers are very soon passed on to something better?—They become telephonists, if they are satisfactory.
Then they are learning a business and are really apprentices?—They are merely messengers while employed here.
Then how do they get the skill which enables them to be telephonists?—If they ire appointed as telephonists, they are then trained as telephonists.
Do they receive this wage while they are being trained?—No, they receive the wage for a telephonist in training.
What is the wage for a telephonist in training?—At 16 years of age in London, she would get 18s. a week.
Eighteen shillings a week as a telephonist in training?—Yes.
The CHAIRMAN: Does that include bonus? —No, 18s. plus bonus.
Then she would get 36s. a week?—Yes, at present.

Mr. AMMON: I have told the right hon. Baronet that the figures are as follow: The actual basic rates for London. A girl under 15 years of age gets 7s. a week; at 15 she gets 8s.; at 16, 10s.; at 17, 12s.; at 18, 14s. Those are the basic rates, and you have to remember that the present cost of living figures shows an increase of about 80 per cent.

The POSTMASTER-GENERAL (Mr. Kellaway): It is 105 per cent. at present.

Mr. AMMON: As I am reminded, we have to add 105 per cent. as the increase due to the cost of living at the moment. That will fall in September, I understand, by a considerable number of points, and I think probably 82.5 would be about the figure. There is a misunderstanding between the right hon. Baronet and myself. The figures I have given are the actual basic rates, and if you add 105 per cent on account of the cost of living, it will bring the figures to something near the figures which the right hon. Baronet has quoted. The Committee say that the granting of a bonus in addition to an increase in the salaries has resulted in a large increase in expenditure which could have been partly avoided without impairing the efficiency of the staff. That is the crux of the Report, and shows the underlying motive and object of the Select Committee. This is really an attack on the war bonus of the Post Office servants. That war bonus is simply paid to them to keep pace with the increased cost of living, and is on a sliding scale, so that it will fall proportionately with the fall in the cost of living. Is the House prepared to say, regarding the persons whose rates of pay in the days before the War was only 18s. a week in the case of postmen; where girls in the probationary stage are receiving only 8s., and sometimes 5s., per week—is the House prepared to endorse the suggestion that there should be no increase?

Mr. A. M. SAMUEL: Nobody said so. That is not in the Report. Read it again.

Mr. AMMON: The Report says:
Your Committee are of opinion that the granting of a bonus in addition to an increase in the salaries has resulted in a large increase in expenditure.
The increase in the salaries amounted to 3s. in the higher and only 1s. in the lower grades. What is there in it, so far as the basic wages are concerned, therefore? You would have these people absolutely starving and not even able to pay the rent for a couple of rooms unless they had this bonus.

Sir C. OMAN: Nobody said that no bonus should be given.

Mr. AMMON: This bonus was agreed to by this House, and surely it is fair to state that the meagre standard of living that these people had in 1914 should be maintained, and it can be maintained only if the figures march with the cost of living. That is our case.

Sir C. OMAN: The wages at present are £42,000,000, against £14,000,000 in 1914, or about three times as much. Has the price of things gone up three times?

Mr. AMMON: The hon. Member came in late and did not hear some of my former remarks, in which I dealt, with some of the points he has raised, and I do not propose to weary the House by going over them again. So far as wages are concerned, expressed in terms of the bonus, they have increased only in proportion to the rise in the cost of living and are falling with it, and it should he remembered that the increase in the cost of living far outstripped wages before the bonus was granted. The fact is that this Report is a carefully worked-up piece of propaganda attacking the bonus. That is what it amounts to, and it is a propaganda which enables the Press to quote instances which are very misleading. The net result is that as they have regard to the very large number of poorly paid servants in the Post Office, this is in effect an attack on the lowest paid people in the Civil Service. The cost of living bonus is as follows: It is revised every six months, in March and September, based on the average cost of living index number for the previous six months. In March, 1922, the revision was based on 105, and the
forthcoming revision in September, 1922, will be based as follows: March, 86; April, 82; May, 81; June, 80; July, 84; August., approximately 80. That gives an average figure of 82.5, which involves a reduction in the bonus of 4/26ths on the present wages and bonus of those in the Civil Service. I submit that it is not put as fairly as it might he put before the public in quoting the maximum figures of certain persons and in not making it clear that the bonus is a fluctuating bonus, falling with the cost of living, and it is calculated altogether to give a wrong impression to the public as regards the actual position.

Mr. KELLAWAY: I think that the House is exercising one of its most valuable, as well as one of its most interesting, functions in the review of the Reports—the interesting Reports—which have been presented by the Committee over which the right hon. Baronet the Member for the City of London (Sir F. Banbury) presides. For my part, as head of the Department of the State, which employs more than half of the servants of the State of this country, I welcome from any quarter criticism which is based on a careful examination of the Department from an unprejudiced point of view. I understand that the Labour party had its representatives on this Committee. I do not know to what extent those Members availed themselves of their privilege of membership of that Committee, but it was very important that there should have been a member on that Committee who could have put to the Committee the points which have just been put by the hon. Member opposite, so that they could have been examined and tested. I am not sure that I agree with the hon. Member that the object of the Committee in presenting their Report was to attack the war bonus scheme. I have read this Report with great care, in order to find out whether the Committee take the view that the Government and this House are entitled to scrap, or seriously to modify, that engagement. I do not understand that they so do.

Sir F. BANBURY: indicated assent.

Mr. KELLAWAY: I think the right hon. Baronet, with whom I am not always in agreement, is the last man who would break a contract.

Sir F. BANBURY: indicated assent.

Mr. KELLAWAY: The House has got to realise the fact that the reason for the rise in the expenditure of the Post Office is overwhelmingly due to the War bonus scheme, and unless the Committee are prepared to say that they want seriously to modify or scrap the War bonus scheme then there is very little in their recommendation. We must. have the intellectual courage to face that problem, each for himself, and unless we are prepared seriously to modify or to scrap the War bonus scheme, then a great deal of what is said on this subject is very little more than hot air. Most of the figures given in this Report are figures which I myself gave when I moved my first Estimates as Postmaster-General. I then called attention to this sensational rise in the expenditure on the Post Office in salaries and wages. I did that over 12 months ago, and I took a step which, I think, mane me the most unpopular man in the country. I said this great rise in Post Office salaries and wages must be met, not by a subsidy from the Exchequer, but by the user of the Post Office. I am glad to say now that the cost of living bonus is steadily coming down. It has come down at a very rapid rate. It has come down from 165 per cent., which was the peak at which the Post Office and the whole of the Civil Service were paid, to the present figure of 105 per cent., and in September the War bonus will be paid on an average of 85 per cent.
I only put this point to the House, and I put it. with some confidence, that there is something to he said for an arrangement under which the greatest body of employés in the State have consented to reductions in their wages, totalling something like £9,000,000 in a year, without any disturbance of order or without any interruption of their duties. I think a good many persons in this country would be very glad indeed if they had got a scheme of that kind in operation. I think there was justification for what the hon. Member opposite said, that the Committee did not point out the fluctuating character of the bonus, which is really a very essential point. That bonus fluctuates with the cost of living, and the impression might very readily be gathered by a careless reader of this Report that the figures given represent in some way the basic wage. The whole of the War bonus may disappear if the cost of living
comes back to the pre-War figure. The whole will then disappear, and you will get back to the basic wages which the hon. Member has given. The war bonus in the Post Office for this year, in spite of reductions, to which I have referred, amounts to £18,400,000. At its peak point it represents £26,000,000. If I could get rid of the war bonus I could go back to halfpenny postcards, penny postage, pre-War charges for telegraphs and telephones and earn a great profit for the State. It is a very attractive prospect. But there is one thing more important than a reduction in expenditure, and it is that this House should honour its obligation to this great body of public servants. Unless you are prepared to suggest—and neither the Committee nor the Chancellor dare suggest it—that that honourable obligation has to be broken then a good deal of the comment on the report of the Committee has been without substance and in fact has been misleading.
There was another point in what was said in regard to new work. The Post Office may complain that when giving the figures showing the reduction of postal series, the Committee did not give the figures of the new work put upon the Post Office. The figures were supplied to the Committee. I do not really understand why they were excluded. Here are the totals at very great length: War Pensions and Allowances paid represented £70,000,000—new work put upon a reduced staff since 1914. Postal drafts represented 28,400,000; War Loan dividends, £9,100,000; Savings Certificates issued—this is for one year, 1921–22, as are all the figures—amounted to £72,000,000, and repaid, £42,000,000. Entertainment Tax stamps sold, 2620,000; Income Tax stamps sold amounted to £714,000. I think it would have strengthened the Report of the Committee if these figures had been given as well as those indicating a falling off in purely postal work.

Mr. MARRIOTT: May I point out to the right hon. Gentleman that if he had got the evidence before him as well as the Reports of the Committee he would find all the figures to which he referred set out in Appendix III just as we received them from the Post Office.

Mr. KELLAWAY: I agree, but I have the Report circulated to the House, and which reached the Press, arid these figures are not there.

Mr. MARRIOTT: The evidence will reach the House also.

Mr. KELLAWAY: Very much after the fact. These criticisms have been based upon the Press report of the Committee. Still, I do not make that criticism in any acrimonious spirit, believe me, for I appreciate too much the industry that was displayed by the Committee. But it is only fair to this great body of public servants who reach something like a quarter of a million scattered throughout the country and in every constituency that the whole of the facts should be given whether favourable or unfavourable to them. If it is intended to suggest, as the hon. Baronet suggested, that the Post Office is a very generous Department, I am bound to say I disagree. As soon as you get down to basic wages, the right hon. Baronet will, I think, agree that you cannot say that it has been a generous Department. On the contrary, the history of the Post Office in regard to its staff has been one of cheese-paring, and since you will agree that you cannot scrap the War bonus or modify it, that being an honourable obligation, you have then to say that the basic wages, most of them were accurately quoted by the hon. Member, are generous wages. In my view they are not. You cannot in this country go back to the postman paid 19s. or 22s. a week. As for an attempt to enforce economy by the only way which it can be enforced, if you are going to stand by the War bonus, then by a reduction in numbers in your staff, then I think the figures by this Committee are not unfavourable. The reduction in the personnel between 1914 and 1922 is not a bad reduction to have been able to effect and still to carry on, as I hope, with great efficiency, the work of that great Department.
I will not go through the various basic wages of the different grades referred to in the Report. Those figures have been given with accuracy, as far as I can test them, by the hon. Member for North Camberwell (Mr. Ammon). I want, however, to make an observation with regard to a criticism in the Report, that the telephone girls receive wages whilst they are being instructed. The Committee
suggest that in ordinary business this would never be heard of, and that, so far from being paid wages, some of them would have to make a payment for their instruction. That is not the fact. This practice of paying telephone girls who are being instructed was the practice of the National Telephone Company, which we have continued, and it is, in fact, the practice in nearly all organised industries. I know that in some un-organised industries it is not the practice, but in organised industries it is the practice to pay these girls. It is the practice even in the railway corn-panics in regard to their telephone girls.
There are one or two points, which the Chairman of the Committee referred to, which I will reply to very briefly. There was the cost of the foreman window cleaner, who was receiving a salary of £300 a year with bonus. They say that the cleaners, who clean the headquarters buildings, have a foreman with a salary of about £300 a year. I have made some inquiries about this foreman window cleaner, and I find That this man is in charge of all the male cleaners responsible for cleaning the headquarters buildings of the Post Office. He has under him a staff of 100 men, and they are scattered through all the headquarters buildings of the Post Office, and they are fairly numerous. You cannot administer a Department with a revenue of £56,000,000 without having a, number of buildings in which to do your business, and the building accommodation of the Post Office, as compared with any other undertaking at all approaching it with regard to the magnitude of its business, is very niggardly.
This foreman window cleaner gets £150 a year as a basic wage, and you arrive at the £300 by adding War bonus. Hon. Members agree that this bonus cannot be touched. I ask is £3 a week as a basic wage excessive to pay for a man in charge of a staff of this sort working at night, who has to exercise a good deal of discretion, and who is in a position to exercise large economies. One of the duties of this staff is to see that the supply of coal to the different rooms in the post office is not excessive, and this man can save his £150 a year basic wage in this way in the course of three months. I do not believe that it pays to pay men who are supervising others niggardly or in-
adequately. On the contrary, I think those are the men who should be well paid.
Another point raised was in regard to the housekeeper and the assistant house, keeper, and the Committee said that they have not been able to ascertain the duties of these officials. I am not surprised that they did not succeed in ascertaining from the Secretary of the Post Office this information, because he is a man who is the permanent executive officer of far and away the biggest business in this country. Therefore I am not surprised that the Committee did not get from him any information as to the duties of the housekeeper and the assistant housekeeper. What I say is that if he had known this he would not have been fit for his job. I have had some experience of the people who keep their microscopic eye on petty details, and they very often neglect the larger things. I have made inquiries myself. I had to, for I did not know what the duties of these officials were. I found that they are in charge of the charwomen. We have to have charwomen to keep the buildings clean. They have to be supervised and these officials do the supervision. There is one confession I have to make to the Committee. The Committee say they were unable to ascertain what were the duties of one cook. I have been unable to make inquiry. I cannot explain what her duties are, but if a question is put down on the subject I will get the information and I hope to be able to satisfy the inquiring spirit of hon. Members.
Criticism was also made with regard to the surveyors. The organisation of the Post Office outside London is this: the country is divided into 13 areas, each area being under an officer called a surveyor. They cover the whole country outside the great cities. Their basic maximum salary has been increased from £900 to £1,000 with the current rate of bonus added—£300. I am going to put this with confidence to the Chairman of this Committee. Does the right hon. Gentleman say that men having the responsibility of representing the interests of the House of Commons over these 13 areas are excessively paid at a basic salary of £1,000? I will add this. More and more our policy is to divorce from headquarters the different areas of the country and to leave more and more to
these men the responsibility of taking decisions in order to avoid sending these questions up to London to be dealt with You can compare the work and responsibility of these men with that of divisional superintendents on the great railways. What do these officials get paid? Not £1,000 a year plus £300 bonus, but sums twice or even three times as great.

Sir F. BANBURY: No.

Mr. KELLAWAY: Yes; I have made inquiries and they are thus paid, and these are the men who can effect real economies whether in the administration of great railway companies or in the administration of the Post Office.

Sir F. BANBURY: There may be some railway companies that pay such salaries, for some are much more extravagant than others, but it is not the whole of them that pay in that way. I should say the position of a surveyor in the Post Office and the position of a traffic manager on a railway are not to be compared. I know what the public is called upon to pay to the Post. Office surveyor, and I should say that £1,300 a year with pension and permanent employment is certainly more than is justified.

Mr. KELLAWAY: The right hon. Baronet says that some railway companies are more extravagant than others. My figures are taken from the most prosperous and most efficient companies These are the companies which pay large salaries to men with large responsibilities. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Peebles (Sir D. Maclean) referred to the value of the figures given in the Committee's Report with regard to the postal services rendered to the Government Departments, and I agree. I think it is essential that the House of Commons should know the value of the services which are rendered to the other Departments.

Sir D. MACLEAN: Is it the rule in the Post Office to give to a Government Department precedence over the call of a member of the public, or is it only done where there is a real emergency?

Mr. KELLAWAY: It should only be in a real case of emergency. A change has been made within the past 12 months, under which the Government Depart-
ments pay in cash for their telegraphing accounts, and it is a subject of consultation between the Post Office and the Treasury as to whether that practice cannot with advantage be extended. Now let me refer to the subject of buildings. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Peebles said that there was on the part of the Government Departments a rage and a. passion for building. Let me give my experience in this House with regard to that. One of the commonest complaints that I get from Members of the House is as to the inadequacy and insufficient number of the Post Office buildings, and I hardly ever walk through the Lobby without some Member or other buttonholing me and asking me when we are going to have the Pest Office in his constituency enlarged and improved. The real fact is that, for something like seven years, there has been a complete cessation of building in connection with Post Offices proper, as distinguished from telephone exchanges, and there are great arrears to be made up; but I think the one point on which I differ sharply from the Committee is in regard to the Thread-needle Street Post Office, and here I hope I shall protect the constituents of the Chairman of the Committee from him.
This is the most important telegraph office in this country outside the Central Telegraph Station. The whole of the great volume of Stock Exchange telegraph business is transacted there. The number of telegrams for the year ending on the 30th June, from the Stock Exchange alone, was 2,473,000. It has been said that you can put this office right with a little paint and varnish, but that really is not the fact. Ever since 1909, the scheme has been in existence for the rebuilding of this office, and the quickest way in which I can deal with the matter is to read from the Report of the Controller of the Telegraph Service. I will read the essential passages. This is what the Report says of the basement of this place, in the centre of the banking world, where the whole of the Stock Exchange telegraphic business is done:
There are five rooms in the basement. They are passages rather than rooms, and the whole arrangement could more appropriately be described as a cellar. The ceilings are very low: with no natural lighting and no natural ventilation. The mail despatch room, the batteries for the instruments, the urinals and W.C.'s, the inspector's retiring room, and the heating arrangements.
are all accommodated here.…To convey the mails the officers have to stoop all the way.
With regard to the ground floor, it proceeds:
The Stock Exchange accommodation is separated, and the Threadneedle Street counter is too small for the work, the public is packed and cannot get at the counter when there is pressure, the safe conduct of money, owing to the cramped position of the safes, is very difficult, and the handling of the very important registered letters is dangerous (over 5,000 registered letters, mainly in the afternoon). Much artificial light is used even on this floor. On wet days the public office is positively offensive.
With regard to the staircase, the Report says that it, is
a narrow circular structure which has given way in several places and is shored up. It is used by the public to go to the public telephones, and artificial light is always in use.
I have not the time, nor would the House bear with me, to go through the whole of the Report; and I have not touched the top floors, to which the Chairman of the Committee, I think, referred. What we said to the Office of Works was this: "Here is this work; it is a growing work now. We require this office to be made adequate for dealing with that work; will you make your plans for dealing with it?" They made their plans, and they said the most economical way of dealing with it was on this plan. The cost—the figures at the time the contracts were last asked for was £89,000—will now be reduced, I think, to more in the nature of £65,000. Therefore, if you consider the economy on its soundest basis, I believe you have to deal drastically with this building. In view of the Reports I should not be properly discharging my responsibility, either to the public or to the staff—and it is the public work in that office that I am chiefly thinking of—if I agreed to the cheese-paring scheme in regard to that office. The Committee wound up by criticising an arrangement that has been come to, by which we add three floors to this building, and let them out to one of the great insurance companies in the City.

Sir F. BANBURY: Two, I thought. If you are going to lease the whole thing, what is the good of building?

Mr. KELLAWAY: I can give the Chairman of the Committee some figures which—I have not read the evidence—I am not sure were put before him, but
it is quite clear from his Report that the position has not been correctly understood or correctly stated before him. This is what the Committee say:
Your Committee did not think that it was advisable to spend a capital sum in order to obtain a rental of five per cent.…
I really do not know from where that comes. These are the facts. The terms of the agreement provide that the company shall take a repairing lease of the three additional storeys, at a rent calculated at 8 per cent. of the building cost (now estimated at £8,100), and 5 per cent. on £25,000, which is the proportion of the original cost. of the site. In other words, for an expenditure of £8,100, we are going to get an annual return from this insurance company of £1,900, a return on our capital for this purpose of nearly 25 per cent. I do not know whether that appeals to the right hon. Baronet as a good investment. I wish it were mine.

Sir F. BANBURY: I do not see the object. I understood the building was insanitary and not fit for the work. You cannot extend the site area, because you cannot get any outside grounds. You can only extend by going up. The three new storeys are to be let to somebody else. Why on earth, then, spend this money?

Mr. KELLAWAY: I have given the figures here, showing that for an expenditure of £8,110 we shall get an annual return of £1,900. There is this condition, that as work in that office grows—as it is bound to grow—we shall be able, under the lease, to take over the additional accommodation. The change made is right throughout the whole building. In those circumstances, I cannot agree with the Committee that the change ought to be made on the lines or within the scale that they recommend.
I have had very rapidly to deal with the very large number of points put to me, but I should not like it to be thought, in putting what is the other point of view, that I have not realised and taken advantage of the value of the examination which the Committee were able to make, though it was necessarily limited. It is to my interest, more than any other man in this House, that the Post Office should see its expenditure reduced, in order that the public can get its
facilities at a lower charge. I hope, before I complete my tenure of office as Postmaster-General, that I shall see the postal charges get back to what they were before the War. It is on the lines on which we are proceeding, taking advantage of every suggestion of economy which is in sight, that I think we shall reach that ideal.

Mr. MARRIOTT: I know I speak on behalf of all my colleagues on the Committee when I say we are very sincerely grateful to the Leader of the Opposition for the remarks he made at an earlier stage of the Debate. But I wish the right hon. Gentleman had found it possible to give us even more material help at an earlier stage of our investigations. May I remind the House what were the circumstances under which this Committee was appointed and what was the work which we were intended to perform on behalf of the House as a whole? We were set up as an Estimates Committee to try to examine the Estimates for the current year before they were presented for detailed examination, or, at any rate, before the House of Commons was called upon to vote the necessary money in Committee on Supply. There was only one condition on which we could adequately perform that task. That was that we should work in the closest connection with the Leaders of the Opposition, or rather the Leaders of the Oppositions, and we ought, during the current Session, to have been in a position to examine, as I think, only one or two of the most important aspects, but to have examined those Estimates, and to have reported upon them before the House was asked to vote the money in Committee of Supply. But there was one other condition on which we could do that work. When this Committee was set up, all those who had experience in the work of the National Expenditure Committee laid very great stress on the point that we should obtain expert assist ante in that work, and that we should have the assistance of a regular official, who should play to this Committee the same sort of part which is played by the Comptroller and Auditor-General in the Public Accounts Committee for it was intended that this Estimates Committee should be parallel in its
functions to the Public Accounts Committee. The Public Accounts Committee, of course, has post mortem functions. It can report to the House only that the money has been properly expended after the expenditure has taken place. The whole purpose of this Estimates Committee was that we should report to the House of Commons before the money was spent and before it was voted. That we have been unable to do, and the sole result of our investigation during the present Session has been this discussion on one of the concluding days of the Session. I hope the House, however, will think our labours—and they have been very considerable labours—have not been entirely in vain. We have, in the short time at our disposal, presented to the House no fewer than five, more or less detailed, Reports. These Reports have formed the basis to-night for a discussion which has been of very great public utility. The utility of the Debate has been acknowledged by the Leader of the Opposition and by the three Ministers who have spoken, but it. was not for the advantage of the Treasury Bench but the advantage of the House as a whole that this Committee was set up, and it will he for the House, I hope at a very early stage of next Session, to say whether this experiment is to he renewed. But I hope that if it be renewed it may be renewed under conditions somewhat different from those that prevailed during the Session now coming to an end. We could not have done our work at all, but for the very large experience and the untiring industry and skill of the Chairman. He has supplied in no small degree the lack of the permanent official whose assistance we were very anxious to obtain.

It being Eleven of the Clock, the Debate stood adjourned.

GAS REGULATION ACT, 1920.

Resolved,
That the draft of a Special Order proposed to be made by the Board of Trade under Section 10 of the Gas Regulation Act, 1920, on the application of the East Hull Gas Company, which was presented on the 27th July and published, be approved.

Resolved,
That the draft of a Special Order proposed to be made by the Board of Trade under Section 10 of the Gas Regulation Act. 1920, on the application of the Hexham Gas
Company, which was presented on the 27th July and published, be approved.

Resolved,
That the draft of a Special Order proposed to be made by the Board of Trade under Section 10 of the Gas Reaulation Act, 1920, on the application of the Mayor, Aldermen, and Burgesses of the borough of Ramsgate, which was presented on the 24th July and published, be approved.

Resolved,
That the draft of a Special Order proposed to be made by the Board of Trade under Section 10 of the Gas Regulation Act, 1920, on the application of the St. Alban's Gas Company, which was presented on the 25th July and published, be approved.

Resolved,
That the draft of a Special Order proposed to be made by the Board of Trade under Section 10 of the Gas Regulation Act, 1920, on the application of the Mayor, Aldermen, and Burgesses of the Borough or Sandwich, which was presented on the 27th July and published, be approved.

Resolved,
That the draft of a Special Order proposed to be made by the Board of Trade under Section 10 of the Gas Regulation Act, 1920, on the application of the Shrewsbury Gas Light Company, which was presented on the 27th July and published, he approved.

Resolved,
That the draft of a Special Order proposed to he made by the Board of Trade under Section 10 of the Gas Regulation Act, 1920, on the application of the Uxbridge, Wycombe, and District Gas Company, which was presented on the 26th July and published, be approved.

Resolved,
That the draft of a Special Order proposed to be made by the Board of Trade under Section 10 of the Gas Regulation Act, 1920, on the application of the Wellingborough Gas Light Company, Limited, which was presented on the 26th July and published. be approved."—[Sir W. Mitchell Thomson.]

BRITISH NATIONALITY (MARRIED WOMEN) BILL.

Ordered, That Mr. Gardiner be discharged from the Select Committee on the British Nationality (Married Women) Bill.

Ordered, That Mr. Barrand be added to the Committee.—[Colonel Gibbs.]

CRIMINAL LAW AMENDMENT BILL.

Mr. SPEAKER: I have satisfied myself that there is a drafting Amendment on this Bill which can be taken.

The UNDER-SECRETARY of STATE for the HOME DEPARTMENT (Sir John Baird): I beg to move, "That the Lords Amendment be considered forthwith."
This is purely a drafting Amendment. Before the Bill left this House we omitted the provision which related to recognizances in England, and it was necessary to strike out the paragraph which translated that provision into Scottish legal phraseology. The legal language in Scotland is different from that in England, and what is understood in England is not understood in Scotland. So it was necessary, in order to make the Bill comprehensible in both countries, to translate this particular provision into phraseology understood in Scotland. Having omitted the provision in reference to England, it was necessary to omit the paragraph which translated it into Scottish legal phraseology. This paragraph remained in the Bill as it left this House, and in another place, by the exercise of that vigilance for which they are famous, it was seen that it was unnecessary, and they proceeded to eliminate it.

Mr. HOLMES: The hon. Gentleman Las said that the House of Lords exercised its usual vigilance. If it be so excellent in all its works, why is it necessary for the Government to introduce a Measure to reform it?

Sir J. BAIRD: I think that that hardly arises on this question.

Lords Amendment considered accordingly.

CLAUSE 4.—(Application to Scotland.)

In the application of this Act to Scot-land—
(3) References to entering into a recognizance with or without sureties shall he construed as references to finding caution.

Lords Amendment:

Leave out paragraph (3).

Agreed to.

The remaining Government Orders were read, and postponed.

Whereupon Mr. SPEAKER adjourned the House, without Question put, pursuant to the Order of the House of 25th July.

Adjourned accordingly at Nine Minutes after Eleven o'Clock.